Multilingual Saso Kitanoski believes in a customer-centric approach and has brought decades of diverse and valuable customer interface experience to his role as Metso's President, Consumables. He sits down with Mining Magazine to share his insights on industry trends, sustainability and significant investments in people and products for the future and how the company's new strategy, "We go beyond," empowers teams and customers to thrive in a rapidly changing mining landscape.

What current trends are you seeing in the mining industry?

I'm seeing two super important trends take center stage. One is the current instability of trade and commercial terms. This results in project uncertainty as companies struggle to make the financing feasible under these conditions. However, it also drives certain minerals and metals like gold, for example, to new heights in terms of pricing. The other is the growing demand for energy transition minerals such as copper, lithium and rare earths. Those minerals are so needed, and we will not achieve a better world without them. The entire discussion around these minerals has now become widely spread in the public, which will help to drive the necessary steps forward. As this transition will take time, the pressure is increasing on mining companies to maximize their producing assets to bridge the gap between the future demand and current production rates.  

Beyond these two trends, a few other factors are important. Here we should mention the labour shortage. We have new regions expanding their mining activities that need to rapidly scale up infrastructure, labour skills, knowledge, and competencies to keep pace. Finally, safety and sustainability are always important and here different regions are applying different strategies.

Where do you see the biggest opportunities for customers to improve?

Firstly, it's the actual assets in operation — how do you use them and generate more from what you have? That's a continuous journey, not something you try now and forget in a year or two.

Mine sites can also be quite cautious and conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies and offerings. Simply trying what is already out there can bring major efficiency and environmental benefits. Many solutions have already been developed, and once some sites begin to adopt them and see the benefits, others will follow. Our part in this as a global solution provider is to introduce our latest available technologies to the customers and speed up their adoption.

There is also an important opportunity for miners to forge strategic partnerships with suppliers to create innovative solutions. By working together, the customer and OEM's can join forces to leverage their knowledge and skills to develop new solutions. 

Finally, many fast-growing mining regions are experiencing labor shortages or have a skills gap as experienced experts retire, and fewer younger professionals enter the field. Here, the opportunity is in taking advantage of more formal programs offered by OEM's to bridge the gap through remote learning, on-site courses and even virtual simulators. There is a chance here to truly transform the learning experience and make sure the next wave of professionals have the skills to succeed in the industry.

How are OEMs like Metso addressing these opportunities?

As an OEM, we are committed to supporting miners as they accelerate production to meet the growing demand for energy transition minerals — and to do so sustainably. We need to consider regionalization and sustainability as key enablers for the support of this growth, especially in the direction of all the "re" words, so reduce, recycle, reuse, repair. Metso has invested a vast amount of resources in developing new product offerings for our customers that can improve sustainability, we call these Metso Plus solutions. Pairing these innovations with our vast network of service and operations presence and expertise, makes our solutions more accessible for the customer and easier to adopt.

If we speak about "reduce", we have solutions that are reducing energy, water and CO2 requirements. A typical example is the stirred mills, especially after our Swiss Tower Mills Minerals acquisition, bringing innovative grinding solutions that use significantly less energy, have a much smaller footprint than traditional horizontal grinding. We also have the latest and most efficient filtration, pumps, and hydrocyclone solutions which allow for significant water reductions on the processing side. When it comes to CO2 emissions, the focus on this has been accelerated in the last 5 years and I think we are ahead of the curve. How do you make the last steps though? That's where we are now and we need to go deeper into R&D to get there.

Finally, how do we minimize the amount of resources used? A typical example is through the longer life of our parts, like crusher wear parts using our innovative MX technology, that uses composites and inserts of different materials which outperform the manganese alloy solutions on the market by up to two or more times. This means fewer parts need to be changed, less manufacturing of new components, less material used, and significantly reduced transport of parts.  Exciting developments continue with the next generation of MX products being launched, even further extending the lifetime of wear parts. 

In terms of "repair", Metso has invested in several large service and repair centres but what is less obvious is "reuse" and "remanufacture". In many cases we can extend the life of a pump's casted parts by adding special coatings or liners. In addition, our service and repair centers have the capability to rebuild or repair pumps to OEM standards with similar warranty as new equipment. This is only possible with the right combination of product and material design backed with strong regional service and operational presence.

These are examples of what we are doing and where the future is going. Focusing on long-life parts brings both cost and sustainability benefits. The only questions are whether the customer is ready to go on that journey, and how we can work with them for quicker adoption.

Finally, we had mentioned opportunities in partnering up to devise new solutions. As many customers already have plants running, how do they transition to a new one or make major investments to modify and improve existing circuits? Here, we can offer a long-term partnership where we take a share in the operational activities under a Life Cycle Services (LCS) agreement, where we often become an active partner, providing guarantees on improvements and making it easier for our customers to move to a more modern system. Training is normally an integrated part of the solution, and it is introduced through our Metso Academy, ensuring the customer's personnel have the latest maintenance and operational learning programs in place for their different technologies and processes. This can help sites bridge the skills gap caused by the labor shortage in the industry.

Through these offerings, we are supporting customers with the overall ownership experience when it comes to their assets, and secondly, setting joint improvement targets, for example in safety and sustainability. We traditionally have very strong relationships with our customers, and we can set and achieve those goals by working and innovating together.

What else is Metso investing in to help customers?

We are mindful that customers in different regions have different requirements and that we need to be flexible with the products we offer in each region along with our solutions and approaches.

One important factor is being close to the customer and we've been making major investments aligned with our strategy for regional growth. One example is the screen centre we're building in Romania; another is an upcoming installation of a mega-class press in Western Australia to strengthen our customer service as the only Rubber and Poly-Met mill liner manufacturer in Australia.

We believe strongly in investing in the technologies and regional presence – developing them can be like swimming upstream - but it's the right direction to take and that's why we're doing it. We can see that our customers need support locally and that they also appreciate the value we bring to them.  For example, we have made rapid acquisitions in Australia of two companies, Jindex and Q&R, which give us great additional knowledge and the possibility for us to move forward with valves and polymers applications in the slurry handling business. 

We're continuing this journey with recent technology acquisitions for our screening business. I am proud to say that we now carry the biggest screen in the world in our portfolio. And why is this important? Because it reduces the required energy and footprint of a screening plant, lowering the maintenance and investment levels by a significant percentage. 

Finally, I want to mention recycling – our foundries are using up to 90% recycled metal but what we are doing differently now is that we engage directly with the customer on that journey. We're shortening the length of the chain to get the recycled material into our facilities and that brings benefits to the customer, Metso and the environment, a win-win situation. Some of these huge parts you don't want to transport across an ocean to recycle so we've invested heavily to be close to our customers.

How is safety being addressed?

Everything we do starts with safety. It's embedded in our new strategy, to be a sustainability and safety frontrunner. We look at how we can improve safety throughout the whole chain from end to end, starting with our equipment and parts design and our own facilities, to how our offerings are operated and maintained safely at customer sites.

We see a lot of customers benchmarking OEMs to understand our approach to safety. I've witnessed a super interesting example of a customer asking if they could see an example on how we use safety for a particular piece of equipment. I have then later seen that in action at their own mine, meaning they've aligned their systems and processes with ours.

Longer-life parts like MX for cones also reduce maintenance risks by requiring fewer shutdowns and component changes. 

Coming back to the sustainability topic - what are customers most focused on and what are possible solutions?

First and foremost is energy usage and here Metso solutions really meet that challenge. Take pumping for example, which is the second-largest consumer of energy after the comminution circuit which includes the grinding stage. Pumping is needed at almost every stage of the flowsheet after dry crushing and screening, all the way through to final material transport in some cases. We have made investments to radically increase our portfolio to help customers optimize energy usage by selecting the perfect pump for their application. We've also built a global footprint for pump delivery, repair, reuse, testing, and recycling to further support our offering. 

The second is water — a high-value resource that is becoming even more critical. We have solutions which use less water in the production circuit. For example, we have outstanding filtration and dewatering solutions which mean less process water usage for the customer and less water remaining in the tailings, which has a major impact on sustainability and also cost.

Finally, understanding what can be recycled, reused and repaired is on the minds of our customers — we already have many solutions deployed regionally, so enabling that across the globe is the next step. By sharing our knowledge with customers, we can bridge the risk of them trying something new which leads to benefits on the financial, commercial, or sustainability side. 

What do you see happening in the space (sustainability, digitalization, innovations etc) 3-5 years from now?

I really hope to see the innovations already available in the market being implemented more widely at customer sites and that this adoption continues to accelerate. There are many proven technologies, but some customers are very slow in adopting those new solutions. I can't blame customers — we need to enable the skills and the learnings at a faster pace for them to make positive changes. When that happens, it will bring significant benefits. Accelerating the adoption of the existing new technologies will also increase the speed of development overall, so it is a necessary step forward.

Digitalization is a strong trend, but it will only work as a vehicle for improving and amplifying the effects of other innovations and sustainability initiatives. When combined with the right innovations and expertise though, it can bring a lot of transparency and visibility to what we're doing and can prevent certain incidents, for example, through preventive maintenance.

I think where we need to put our efforts is the overlap between these three topics. Doing so will have the biggest impact on sustainability, the customers' utilization of their assets and to society.

In the coming years, we need to make sure that what we already have in place is implemented. At Metso, we will strive to do our share to educate and make the roadmap easier for our customers so they can get the benefits.

What are you most excited about?

We have a good track record of doing new things which have an impact. And we have done extensive R&D on certain critical components for our customers. So, one thing that really excites me is seeing the fruitful results of our investments and efforts from the last 5 –10 years.

Secondly, I can see the future requirements of our customers aligning with what we are investing in today, but more importantly, what we have in the backpack for the next 3– 5 years. Thirdly, our new strategy "We go beyond" means taking that extra step in everything we do. Metso is equipped with the knowledge, skills and people — we proudly call ourselves Metsonites — and I can see the energy in our teams when we talk about the new strategy and the new heights we want to reach. That really has brought a lot of excitement but also trust in our path and our journey over the next 3 –5 years.

If I was a customer of Metso, I would feel very safe for my future because my industry issues are aligned with what Metso is investigating, investing in, and planning to do. Our closeness to our customers is of absolute value — not just geographically but also understanding and sharing the same issues. By engaging and helping customers adopt what's new — that's how we go beyond.

What makes you an engaged Metsonite?

Metso is a university, if I can put it that way. It offers unlimited opportunities for those who want to learn, to challenge themselves in whatever field of leadership or technology or discipline they want, and that richness keeps people really engaged. Next, it's a welcoming environment. And the people — there is something in our culture that brings people to be very open, very honest. That provides a shortcut to opportunity and offers immediate support, and that culture has become very visible in the last 10 –15 years and I hope it carries forward in the years to come!