BHP and Rio Tinto, formed a Tailings Management Consortium (TMC) to develop solutions for sustainably improving tailings dewatering and management. This work has the potential to reduce the safety risks and environmental footprints associated with tailings storage facilities.

We’re committed to sharing what we’ve learned with industry and working together to build capability. We’ve published the documents below to support industry progress in tailings dewatering, and we welcome feedback to help continuously improve our approach.

To date they have generated two publications:

Filtered Stacked Tailings: A Guide for Study Managers

This document provides guidance to project study managers who are evaluating filtered tailings systems. It summarises the study methodology, shares practical insights, and explains how these lessons can inform and improve filtered tailings studies.

Unlocking Large Tonnage Filtered Tailings Stacks: A Geotechnical Perspective

This white paper presents a forward-looking geotechnical framework to enable the safe, stable and cost-effective deployment of large-tonnage filtered-tailings stacks – a potential game changer in reducing filtered tailings management capital and operating costs. It outlines key geotechnical knowledge gaps and proposes new ways to consider compaction techniques to achieve the required densities for large-scale operations.