Arjen de Bruin | Group CEO | OIM Consulting | mail me |
Most mining losses do not come from commodity prices. Instead, they come from operational friction that compounds across every shift.
Mining companies can tell you exactly what they spend on diesel, explosives or labour. They can quantify the cost of downtime, track commodity price fluctuations by the hour and model production scenarios years into the future. Yet, across many mines, some of the industry’s biggest losses still go largely unmeasured because they are embedded in the way shifts unfold day after day.
Our research across mining operations in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that as much as 10% to 20% of operational output can disappear between planning and execution. In some cases, mines operate at just 42% role execution effectiveness at the supervisory level. Meanwhile, a typical 12-hour shift delivers only 5.5 hours of effective production time.
The terrifying reality is that, at current commodity prices, these losses translate into tens, and sometimes hundreds of millions of rands lost annually at a single operation. These are the productivity taxes costing mines. They are recurring losses created by slow decisions, disconnected teams, reactive leadership, and frontline capability gaps. However, unlike commodity cycles, companies can largely control and resolve these issues through the right interventions.
Over time, we have identified four distinct productivity taxes that repeatedly emerge across mining operations.
Connectivity tax
This tax refers to the cost of broken information flow between the plan and the face. Most mines today do not lack data. Dispatch systems track fleet movement in real time, maintenance systems continuously monitor equipment status and production targets are documented in detail. Yet, many operations remain what we describe as “data rich but decision poor”.
To be effective, the right information must reach the right person at the right moment and in a format that they can act on during the shift itself.
In many operations, supervisors spend between 24% and 29% of their shifts in meetings and administration instead of on the floor. Consequently, long periods pass without structured observation, corrective action, or real-time coaching. The operational impact compounds quickly.
What often appears to be a production problem is, in reality, a communication and leadership problem. These hidden inefficiencies are among the productivity taxes costing mines across the continent.
Velocity tax
The “velocity tax” encompasses the cost of slow decisions and reactive execution. Arguably, it is the most expensive tax of all because it multiplies across the entire mining cycle.
Across many sites, our assessments show that 91% of supervisors operate reactively rather than proactively. Teams address problems only after they have already disrupted the plan. By the time managers escalate and discuss decisions, the production window has often narrowed or disappeared entirely.
One of the most obvious examples is blasting performance underground. At several operations, crews average 1.2 blasts per shift against a planned target of 1.5. On paper, a 0.3 shortfall may seem marginal. However, across six crews, it translates into a 20% reduction in face advance every shift. Over a month, the financial impact becomes enormous.
The same pattern appears in maintenance. Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) often stretches from six to ten hours, compared with a world-class benchmark of four to six hours. Every minute that teams delay intervention permanently removes productive hours from the system.
Resilience tax
Mining remains one of the most volatile industries in existence. Equipment breaks regularly, conditions change, and targets move. Healthy and resilient operations recover within the shift.
Fragile operations, by contrast, allow disruption to collapse the plan entirely. Therefore, the “resilience tax” refers to the cost of a workforce and culture that cannot absorb disruption effectively. Our behavioural and safety data show that many operations carry significant fragility within the system. On average, emotional control scores 53%, while resilience sits at 61%.
Under pressure, unsafe behaviours increase significantly, and teams become reactive instead of disciplined. The Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) across some sub-Saharan African operations remains between 2.5 and 4.5 times above global benchmarks. Furthermore, every serious incident brings not only human costs but also lost production days and operational instability.
It is important to remember that resilience is not about “warm and fuzzy” culture programmes. Instead, it is about operational capability under pressure and the ability of supervisors and crews to stabilise performance when conditions deviate from the plan.
Capacity tax
The fourth and perhaps most foundational of the productivity taxes costing mines is the “capacity tax”. It is the systemic cost of placing people into roles without equipping them with the capability required to lead effectively.
Across our supervisory assessments, only 17% of supervisors met the minimum competency threshold required for the role. Planning and organising emerged as the single largest gap area, while leading and developing others ranked as the second-lowest competency. This matters because supervisors are the operational multipliers inside a mine. Every process, target and safety protocol ultimately rests in their hands.
All too often, organisations promote technically strong individuals into supervisory roles without first developing them as leaders. As a result, many operations run their most important operational layer below the required capability threshold every single shift.
In conclusion
The good news is that this challenge also presents an opportunity. We have seen operations improve supervisory competency from 17% to 53% within 16 weeks through our structured on-the-floor coaching and Supervisory Development Programme (SDP). We have also seen mines recover double-digit productivity gains through better planning routines, stronger shift management and supervisors spending more time leading where it matters most.
I believe that mining’s next productivity breakthrough will come from fixing the operational leadership that ultimately determines whether plans are executed in real time during every shift. The productivity taxes costing mines are not inevitable. They can be addressed through stronger leadership, improved communication and more effective capability development.
Because, in the end, the biggest productivity losses in mining are rarely hidden in the mine shaft. They are hidden in the shift.
