The perennial challenge facing mining and minerals operators is to
improve productivity, usually by a combination of cost reduction and
performance improvement. In a typical production situation involving
mining and processing activities, the standard approach has long been to
seek improvements in each activity, effectively in isolation from each
other. However, the realisation is growing that there is considerable
potential to achieve really substantial productivity gains by much
improved integration of mining and processing with the key being to
consider what is best in the total sense. Some of the linkages between
fragmentation in mining and downstream processing are considered in
this paper. These linkages involve technical, operational and economic
Considerations.