Webinar: Proactive planning for tailings closure: cutting costs and reducing risks

This webinar, presented by SRK Consulting (an AusIMM Major Partner) will show how early, integrated planning for tailings storage facility closure has the potential to cut long-term costs, reduce risk and help mines meet global standards while leaving a positive legacy.

About this event

Tailings storage facilities can become a mine’s largest liability, yet proactive closure planning turns that liability into value. Drawing on real projects from Australia, Africa and beyond, the session explains how design tweaks made as early as the pre-feasibility study stage – such as concurrent rehabilitation, adaptive water management and nature-based landforms – shrink closure budgets and satisfy the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM).

Host Justin Walls will unpack the key cost drivers, explore tools for predicting long-term performance and share lessons in engaging with regulators, Traditional Owners and local communities. Attendees will leave with an appreciation for embedding closure metrics into daily operations, plus clear strategies for lowering financial provisions and securing their social licences.

Speaker/s

Justin Walls

Principal Tailings Engineer, SRK Consulting

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Justin Walls is a professionally registered environmental engineer with almost 20 years’ international experience in tailings, water and mine-closure engineering. After more than a decade designing and constructing tailings storage facilities across Southern and Eastern Africa, he shifted his focus to the closure phase of the mining lifecycle.

Now based in SRK’s Perth office, Justin specialises in the closure design of TSFs, integrating water management, geotechnical stability, nature-based solutions and stakeholder expectations to develop pragmatic, cost-effective landforms. His project portfolio spans multiple commodities and continents, supporting operations as they prepare their tailings facilities for long-term stability, relinquishment and post-mining land use.