BHP and Rio Tinto have joined forces through the Tailings Management Consortium (TMC) to accelerate innovation in filtered tailings dewatering and tailings storage facility (TSF) management, releasing two major new guidance documents aimed at transforming industry standards.
The collaboration represents a significant step forward in addressing one of mining’s most critical challenges: reducing the safety risks and environmental impact of tailings storage while improving water recovery in an increasingly water-scarce world.
New Industry Guidance Documents Released
The two companies have published practical, actionable resources designed to help the global mining industry adopt safer and more sustainable tailings management practices:
1. Filtered Stacked Tailings: A Guide for Study Managers
This comprehensive guide equips project study managers with a proven methodology for evaluating filtered (dry stack) tailings systems. It shares real-world insights gained from extensive testing and outlines how to improve feasibility studies, reduce risks, and optimize design decisions for filtered tailings projects.
Filtered stacked Tailings Study guide
2. Unlocking Large Tonnage Filtered Tailings Stacks: A Geotechnical Perspective
This forward-looking white paper presents a new geotechnical framework for the safe, stable, and cost-effective deployment of large-tonnage filtered tailings stacks.
It addresses critical knowledge gaps in the industry and proposes innovative approaches to compaction techniques required to achieve the high densities needed for large-scale operations. According to BHP, this could be a game-changer in dramatically reducing both capital and operating costs for filtered tailings management.
Unlocking Large Tonnage Filtered Tailings Stack White paper
The Tailings Management Consortium (TMC)
The Tailings Management Consortium was established in 2022 with a clear mission: to fast-track the development of technologies that significantly increase water recovery from mine tailings, with an initial focus on high-volume filtered tailings solutions.
In 2023, the TMC signed an expanded agreement that broadened its scope from a single large-volume filtration pilot to developing an entire portfolio of advanced tailings dewatering technologies. This strategic evolution reflects the growing urgency across the mining sector to move away from traditional wet tailings storage methods toward more sustainable alternatives.
Why This Matters: Safety, Sustainability, and Economics
Tailings management remains one of the mining industry’s highest-risk areas. Catastrophic failures, such as the 2019 Brumadinho disaster, have intensified global scrutiny and led to the adoption of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM).
Filtered and stacked tailings (also known as dry stack tailings) offer several key advantages over conventional slurry tailings dams:
- Significantly lower risk of dam failure
- Substantially higher water recovery rates
- Smaller environmental footprint
- Faster and more effective site rehabilitation
- Reduced long-term closure and maintenance costs
BHP emphasized the collaborative approach, stating:
“We’re committed to sharing what we’ve learned with industry and working together to build capability. We’ve published these documents to support industry progress in tailings dewatering, and we welcome feedback to help continuously improve our approach.”
