Mining software provider K2fly will launch a new technology platform later this year, capitalising on its experience gleaned from working with tier 1 and 2 miners in the increasingly critical environmental, social and governance, or “ESG” sector.
The WA-based ASX-listed company also unveiled collaboration to leverage its technology with Maptek, an organisation recognised as one of the world’s biggest private mining software companies with clients in 95 countries.
K2fly’s mission is to address the ESG challenges in the resources sector by helping manage risks around its clients’ social licence to operate in areas such as reputation and disclosure.
The WA-based ASX-listed company offers software solutions in natural resources governance, mineral resource governance and technical assurance on a single platform.
K2fly’s platform will soon be updated with its new cloud-first overarching product for a suite of solutions in an effort to make it easier for companies to fulfil their ESG responsibilities.
The first solution, Resource Reporting, is set to be released in the last quarter of this year and will replace K2fly’s RCubed software that was first unveiled in 2019.
The company says the upgraded platform will provide users with strengthened scale and improved workflow capabilities.
The platform aims to reduce errors and person-dependency risk within an organisation, generate an audit trail and significantly improve workflows to accurately adhere to reporting requirements, it says.
The platform will be supported by Model Manager and Mine Reconciliation that K2fly says will be the world’s first Commercial off the Shelf, or “COTS” comprehensive resource reporting solution able to be used for public disclosures.
K2fly CEO, Nic Pollock said: “The new platform allows us to offer a more comprehensive resource reporting system and unlock that capability across multiple additional use cases, such as tailings, rehabilitation and heritage, for instance.”
It will enable customers to leverage the organisational structures’ governance capabilities at the heart of the system, Pollock added.
K2fly added BHP to its client list after signing its first contract with “the Big Australian” in the second quarter of this year.
The $2 million one-year deal saw BHP roll out its ground disturbance solution data management system to its iron ore operations in WA’s Pilbara region.
K2fly management says it will continue to focus on tier 1 and 2 miners globally because it sees them as perfect opportunities to roll out additional and complementary solutions.
Besides the BHP contract, it also clocked up fresh deals with Rio Tinto and one of the world’s biggest copper producers, Asarco. Others in its customer list include Fortescue Metals Group, AngloGold Ashanti and South32.
However, Pollock says whilst the new Resource Governance Platform will be a benefit for the multi-commodity miners with sites in different locations and countries, it will also provide smaller companies with greater flexibility.
K2fly and Maptek share many common interests in the resources sector.
Maptek specialises in mine planning and geological modelling software and its data is often used by miners to “feed” into K2fly’s products.
They have a high proportion of customers in common, Maptek recently made a 13 per cent strategic investment in K2fly and Chairman Peter Johnson appointed to K2fly’s board as a Non-Executive Director.
Johnson said that in the current situation, where miners face twin headwinds of a worker shortage plus increased regulation and scrutiny around governance, the collaboration between K2fly and Maptek would help make their work easier, more efficient and more reliable.
The two companies are now working together to connect Maptek’s Vulcan platform that supplies modelling data input, with K2fly’s Resource Reporting solution.
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By Matt Birney
