01 — Mine Risk Profile

What can go wrong — and what it costs.

Analysis — Roger Donaldson, Director, MineTrans

You already manage these risks every shift. Our job is to make sure that when engineering controls are exhausted, the financial consequence lands on an insurer's balance sheet — not on your production plan.

R·01Machinery & equipment breakdownMills, crushers, winders, conveyors, haul fleet — ranked by replacement lead time and production dependency.
R·02Fire & explosionThe sector's largest peril by claim value. Conveyor fires, plant fires, and underground events drive the severity tail.
R·03Tailings & geotechnicalDam integrity, slope stability, seismicity. GISTM alignment is now a baseline underwriting expectation — and evidence of it earns terms.
R·04Business interruptionThe consequence that outlasts the event — roughly 80% of sector gross losses.
R·05Power & water supplyGrid instability and water scarcity are now systemic, not incidental. Both are primary BI triggers across the region.
R·06People, liability & SASRIAEmployers' liability, contractors, third parties, directors' exposure — plus strike, riot and civil commotion extensions.
R·07Marine transitConcentrate and equipment in transit — road, rail, port and sea, across multiple jurisdictions.
Critical plant — mapped, ranked, protected
Critical plant — mapped, ranked, protected

02 — The BI Gap

What happens when declared values are wrong.

Under-declaring business interruption values triggers the average clause. The illustration below shows the shortfall on a mine that declared R65m against an actual annual gross profit of R100m.

Illustrative BI settlement — under-declared values

Figures are illustrative only and do not represent an actual claim or a forecast of any outcome.

Actual gross profitR100m
Declared valueR65m
Likely settlement±R42m
Uninsured shortfall−R58m

03 — Operational Criticalities

What keeps you running — mapped, ranked, protected.

Critical assets

The plant that drives production — mills, winders, crushers, substations, TSFs — ranked by lead time and revenue dependency.

Output: criticality register

Single points of failure

Components with no redundancy — the exposures that turn one breakdown into a site-wide stoppage.

Output: SPOF elimination plan

Maintenance & asset health

Condition monitoring, preventative maintenance and critical spares strategy — your strongest card at renewal.

Output: underwriter evidence pack

Emergency readiness

Response plans, drills, workforce capability and stakeholder communication — shortening the interruption.

Output: continuity playbook

Watch what one failure does

The sequence below runs on a loop: normal production → a mill failure → downstream stoppage → recovery under a properly structured programme. This is the exposure a critical-asset survey maps before it happens.

Pit / Shaft
RUNNING
Primary Mill
RUNNING
Plant / Process
RUNNING
Rail / Port
SHIPPING
Production flowing Single point of failure BI cover carries fixed costs & payroll
Request a critical-asset survey

Common questions

Questions on assessing mine risk.

What types of risk assessment does a mine need?

Three do most of the work. A critical-asset assessment identifies the plant whose failure stops production and how long replacement really takes. A business interruption assessment quantifies the income lost during that downtime and sets the indemnity period and sum insured. A liability and environmental assessment covers exposure to third parties, employees and rehabilitation obligations. A baseline risk assessment for health and safety sits alongside these but answers a regulatory question rather than an insurance one, and the two are often confused.

Do you provide a mining risk assessment template?

We work from a structured questionnaire covering eighteen categories of mining exposure, and a twelve-step business interruption methodology that is published in full on this site. Rather than hand over a blank template, we apply that framework to your operation with you, because the answers that matter — replacement lead times, single points of failure, declared values — come from your production data and maintenance history, not from a form.

How does a tailings storage facility affect our insurance?

A tailings storage facility is usually the largest single environmental and liability exposure on a mine, and insurers price it accordingly. Alignment with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, an independent review process and current stability monitoring all bear directly on what cover is available and at what terms. Where a facility is well governed and the evidence is documented, that is worth presenting to the market rather than leaving the insurer to assume the worst.