The original and most basic relationship between mining company and explosive supplier was a simple one of consumer and product supplier. The divide between the two was quite clear-cut with neither taking much interest in the activities of the other. The explosive supplier had little understanding or share in the outcome, efficient rock breakage and therefore impact on mining and milling. Likewise, the mining company did not encourage the improvement or development of products. The transactions were limited to product and funds. This environment does not encourage any form of knowledge sharing, trust or optimisation of the mining process._x000D_
Conversely, there are now a variety of relationships to the point that the mining company may simply be an asset manager whereby all operational' aspects are contracted out. For the drill and blast aspect this takes the form of a Rock-On-Ground' contract whereby the explosives company takes on design, drill, load and fire responsibilities and is paid a rate per volume of broken rock. This removes the majority of risk to the mining company derived from having to produce broken rock and guarantees the cost of a portion of the overall unit cost of mining. The onus is now on the explosives supplier to break rock to a specification as efficiently as possible._x000D_
There exist a number of variations between the basic supply' and Rock-On-Ground'. These contracts may also include value sharing to encourage the explosive supplier to optimise the mining operation to maximise profit._x000D_
This paper looks at some of the drivers for the change in explosive supplier-consumer relationships and examines the pros' and cons' of a few of the options._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Thomson, S, 2005. Developments in explosive supplier-customer relationships, in Proceedings New Leaders' 2005, pp 51-54 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).