Demand for most commodities is projected to grow in future and is unlikely to be met by discovery and recycling alone. The implied supply gap will need to be met by existing undeveloped orebodies which have not reached production due to a variety of technical, environmental and social challenges. The SMI is developing a database of undeveloped orebodies and the challenges that they face preventing their development. In the geometallurgical space it is possible to integrate a range of datasets to assess factors such as variability in ore and waste characteristics, amenability to waste rejection and the presence or absence of deleterious elements. These factors are estimated by integrating data from a range of sources including commercial mineral deposit databases, more geologically-focused and deposit type-specific databases, company technical reports and academic publications. The derived information can be used in turn to assess and prioritise research and development strategies to address these challenges. This will be illustrated using the example of over 300 undeveloped copper orebodies representing approximately 1 billion tonnes of copper metal resources. In this database there are clear examples where the key impediments relate to lack of variability, excessive variability and prohibitive levels of deleterious elements, providing a strong basis for continued development of more robust, geologically realistic and high resolution geometallurgical tools to address these challenges
