Geometallurgy is an important addition to any evaluation project or mining operation. As a discipline, it seeks to maximise the net present value (NPV) of an orebody while minimising technical and operational risk. It also aims to promote sustainable development and initiatives by ensuring that all stages of extraction are performed in an optimal manner from a technical, environmental and social perspective. To achieve these goals, development of innovative technologies and approaches along the entire commodity value chain are being established (Glass, 2016). Geometallurgy has been shown to increase operational stakeholder collaboration, creating an environment for knowledge sharing and improved data acquisition and interrogation, with the end result being the integration of such data into mine planning and scheduling. All of these aspects create better business optimisation, utilisation of staff and targeted and realistic key performance indicators._x000D_
The mining industry faces numerous challenges including, but not limited to: declining ore grades geometrically and/or internally more complex deposits deep-seated deposits, with potentially high in situ stress regimes increasing quantities of mine waste that needs to be managed appropriately higher energy, water and chemical costs processing of more challenging and refractory ores - textural complexities stricter environmental/permitting conditions - so-called licence to mine' increasing demand for specialist metals (eg rare earth elements, In, Ge, Te, Rh, Se, Ga and Li) commodity market volatility a difficult funding environment._x000D_
Given these challenges, geometallurgy provides the opportunity to control or at least manage some of them._x000D_
CITATION: Dominy, S C and O'Connor, L, 2016. Geometallurgy - Beyond Conception, in Proceedings The Third AusIMM International Geometallurgy Conference (GeoMet) 2016, pp 3-10 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).