Project Economics - Second Edition

Project Economics for Mineral Process Engineers — Second Edition

The practical project economics reference for engineers who need answers, not theory. Fully revised and substantially expanded.

If you work on feasibility studies, cost estimates, or investment decisions for mineral processing projects, this is the book that bridges the gap between your metallurgical training and the financial language of boardrooms and lenders. It is written by a practising consultant with over thirty years of international experience in gold processing and project economics — not an academic with no site time.

What you'll learn:

✅ How to calculate and interpret NPV, IRR, MIRR, Payback Period, and Profitability Index — the five metrics every investment decision depends on

✅ How to build a capital cost estimate from first principles using the Lang and Hand factored methods, with a full worked example for a 500 ktpa gold CIL plant

✅ The AACE International estimate classification system — so you know exactly how much confidence to place in any cost estimate you're given or producing

✅ How to build a complete operating cost model from the ground up, including the All-In Sustaining Cost (AISC) metric the entire gold industry uses to benchmark performance

✅ How to construct a tornado diagram and run a Monte Carlo simulation — the two risk analysis tools every bankable feasibility study and lender review expects to see

✅ How decision trees and real options valuation capture the value of staged development that a standard DCF model misses entirely

✅ The South African regulatory risks — Mining Charter compliance, water use licences, carbon tax, MPRDA royalties, Eskom reliability — that materially affect project economics in this region

✅ What actually goes wrong on real projects: a full post-mortem case study tracing a greenfield African gold project from a BFS NPV of $82 million to an operational DSCR breach, with root-cause analysis you won't find in any textbook

New in this Second Edition:

This is not a light refresh. The second edition adds approximately 80 pages of new material: MIRR and Profitability Index, gold price volatility analysis (2010–2025), the AACE classification system, Lang/Hand CapEx methods, a full bottom-up OpEx build-up, a cyanide cost model, South African and African cost benchmarks, tornado diagram construction, fully worked Monte Carlo simulation, decision tree analysis, South African regulatory risk, a project failure post-mortem, three new case studies, and self-assessment questions with model answers throughout.

Includes a free downloadable Excel DCF model template — a fully linked 18-period financial model with production schedule, revenue model, OpEx build, CapEx and depreciation, tax and royalties, cash flow and discounting, a results dashboard (NPV/IRR/MIRR/Payback/PI/AISC), and a tornado-ready sensitivity sheet. Built to mirror every worked example in the book, so you can open the spreadsheet and the chapter side by side.

Who this is for: Mineral process engineers, metallurgists, mining engineers, project managers, and financial analysts working on feasibility studies, cost control, or investment evaluation in the minerals industry. Also suitable for postgraduate students in mineral process engineering and extractive metallurgy.