Draslovka has emerged as a transformative force in global mining, developing innovative technological solutions to address increasingly complex ore extraction challenges. With over 60 years of experience in the mining sector, particularly in Mexico, the company has strategically expanded beyond traditional reagent sales to create comprehensive technological platforms that address critical industry needs.

At the core of Draslovka’s approach are two critical business units: Glycine Leaching Technology (GLT) and Sensors and Analytics. These innovations directly target the industry’s most pressing challenges: complex ores, limited resources, and environmental sustainability.

Glycine Leaching Technology: A Breakthrough in Metal Extraction

The Glycine Leaching Technology represents a breakthrough in metal extraction. This licensed platform utilizes glycine-based patents and dual reagents specifically designed for challenging ore compositions. Unlike traditional extraction methods, GLT allows mining operations to reprocess tailings, extract residual value, and significantly reduce reagent usage. The technology has demonstrated success globally, with notable implementations in Australia, Africa, and Mexico.

MetOptima and Blue Cube: Real-Time Optimization

Complementing GLT is MetOptima, Draslovka’s artificial intelligence suite that revolutionizes mineral processing optimization. This software integrates data across grinding, flotation, and leaching circuits, providing real-time insights that traditional methods might overlook. By analyzing operational parameters, MetOptima enables instant decision-making, helping mines improve recovery rates, throughput, and cost efficiency.

The Sensors and Analytics unit also includes Blue Cube, a specialized sensor line that provides immediate ore and slurry analysis. Where traditional laboratory testing takes days, Blue Cube delivers critical insights in real-time, allowing for immediate process adjustments.

A Pragmatic Approach to Technology Adoption

Draslovka recognizes the mining industry’s inherent conservatism and has strategically approached technological adoption. Their approach focuses on demonstrating tangible benefits through extensive testing and collaboration with mining operations worldwide. The company’s philosophy emphasizes that innovation means reimagining possibilities within existing operational frameworks, not disruption.

Environmental Responsibility at the Center

Environmental responsibility is fundamental to their technological development. Draslovka co-founded a global Cyanide Code management system and continues to address sodium cyanide management. Their GLT technology specifically addresses community and regulatory concerns by dramatically reducing reagent requirements and minimizing environmental risks.

Preparing for the Energy Transition

The company is preparing for the green energy transition by developing solutions for base metals like lithium, copper, and nickel. Their research teams maintain a forward-looking innovation horizon of three to five years, dedicated to anticipating solutions for future mining challenges.

Momentum Building in the Industry

While the mining sector has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies, Draslovka observes increasing momentum. Miners are recognizing that data generation and technological integration are no longer optional but necessary for competitive survival. The success of pioneering operators has created a ripple effect, making advanced technologies more acceptable.

Understanding Miners’ Challenges

Central to Draslovka’s success is their commitment to understanding miners’ specific challenges. They emphasize that effective innovation requires deep communication between technology providers and mining operations. By listening closely to industry needs, they develop targeted, practical solutions that address real-world extraction challenges.

A Holistic Solution for the Mining Industry

As global demand for metals continues to grow, driven by technological advancement and green energy transitions, Draslovka stands at the forefront of responsible, efficient mining technology. Their integrated approach of reagents, AI, and specialized sensors represents a holistic solution to the mining industry’s most complex challenges.

Draslovka Expands Glycine-Leaching Ambitions with New Windarra Tailings Trial

Draslovka on 6 August 2024 confirmed it will test its proprietary Glycine Leaching Technology on gold- and nickel-rich tailings at the Windarra project, aiming to show how the reagent system can extract residual metals more efficiently and with lower environmental impact than conventional methods, according to International Mining.

The Windarra program underscores how the 60-year-old Czech-born firm, best known for supplying sodium cyanide to mines in Mexico and elsewhere, is reinventing itself as a provider of integrated technology platforms for some of the sector’s hardest extraction problems. Executives say reprocessing legacy tailings with GLT, pairing it with real-time sensors and an artificial-intelligence optimization suite, can unlock value miners previously left in waste while addressing growing regulatory and community pressure to shrink reagent use and carbon footprints.

The Dual-Reagent Glycine System

Developed over the past decade, the dual-reagent glycine system is the centrepiece of Draslovka’s innovation push. According to the company, the non-toxic amino acid leachant selectively dissolves metals from complex ore bodies and tailings, allowing operators to cut consumption of traditional, more aggressive chemicals. Trials in Australia, Africa, and Mexico have already shown positive recoveries on copper, gold, and battery-metal deposits. The Windarra campaign is designed to validate those results in a multi-metal environment. Success there could open a commercial pathway for processing some 10 million tonnes of historical tailings on site.

Draslovka’s Broader Technology Stack

While GLT is the highest-profile product, Draslovka has reorganized around two complementary business units. The first, Glycine Leaching Technology, bundles the amino-acid reagent, laboratory services, and on-site engineering support. The second, Sensors and Analytics, houses MetOptima—an artificial-intelligence platform that ingests data from grinding, flotation, and leaching circuits—and Blue Cube, an inline sensor that delivers rapid slurry assays once available only through time-consuming lab analysis. Together, the systems are intended to give mine staff a single view of plant performance and the leaching chemistry that drives it.

Executives argue that the integration is critical: a more benign reagent on its own does not guarantee higher recovery or lower costs unless operators can see, in near-real time, how variables such as grind size, pH, and residence time affect the dissolution of metals. MetOptima closes that feedback loop by flagging deviations and recommending adjustments the moment they occur, rather than days later when the data are finally processed. Blue Cube’s spectrographic sensors, mounted directly in the slurry stream, supply the high-frequency data that make those recommendations possible.

Reimagining Tailings as a Resource

Tailings reprocessing is one of the fastest-growing markets for the technology. Most historical waste dumps still contain valuable minerals locked in refractory phases that resisted earlier extraction regimes. By applying glycine, which forms stable complexes with a broad suite of metals, Draslovka says operators can mobilize that inventory without resorting to higher doses of cyanide or sulphuric acid. At Windarra, the goal is to show that gold and nickel—two metals with very different chemistries—can be leached sequentially or even simultaneously in a blended circuit, something traditional flowsheets struggle to achieve.

Environmental Considerations and Stewardship

Environmental considerations are central to the pitch. The company co-founded a global Cyanide Code management system years ago and still supplies cyanide where it remains the optimal choice, but it contends that reducing overall reagent volumes is now a competitive necessity. In many jurisdictions, tailings facilities face tighter discharge standards, and investors increasingly scrutinize the social licence of projects. Glycine, a naturally occurring amino acid used in food production, is marketed as easier to handle and as producing fewer toxic species in residue streams.

A Pragmatic Approach to Industry Conservatism

Mining’s reputation for slow technology uptake is well earned, Draslovka concedes. To overcome that inertia, the firm emphasizes pilots and collaborative studies. The Windarra initiative follows that template: site operators will work shoulder-to-shoulder with Draslovka metallurgists to fine-tune reagent dosage and residence times, generating a data set both parties can interrogate. The company says that by demonstrating cost savings—whether through higher recovery, lower reagent bills, or deferred capital spending on new ore—mines become more willing to scale the technology.

That hands-on model has helped land early adopters across continents, feeding a growing body of case studies. For example, a mid-tier Mexican gold producer used GLT to treat stockpiled material once considered sub-economic, recovering ounces that immediately entered cash flow. In Africa, a copper operation reported improved leach kinetics on mixed oxide-sulphide ore, eliminating the need for a separate roasting circuit. Each success chips away at the perception that advanced chemistries and machine learning are risky experiments rather than practical tools.

Preparing for the Energy-Transition Metals Wave

Looking ahead, Draslovka’s research teams focus on ore types the green-energy transition is bringing to prominence: lithium, cobalt, nickel, and complex copper polymetallic bodies. The company keeps a three-to-five-year innovation horizon, aiming to release updated reagent formulations and sensor suites before processing challenges become acute. Management believes that as electric-vehicle manufacturers and battery suppliers demand ethically sourced metals, technologies that can retrieve more metal from less ore—and from previously discarded tailings—will command a premium.

Broader Implications and Hurdles

Tailings transformation programs like Windarra’s illustrate a larger shift in mining economics and environmental governance. Where prior generations viewed waste piles as sunk costs, rising metal prices and ESG pressure have reframed them as latent assets and liabilities simultaneously: assets because they still house billions of dollars in metal, liabilities because poorly managed dumps carry perpetual water-quality obligations. By inserting glycine into conventional flowsheets, Draslovka hopes to attack both aspects—monetizing the metal while reducing the long-term toxicity profile of the residue.

Yet scaling such solutions will hinge on more than chemistry. Operators must invest in data infrastructure so AI engines such as MetOptima have reliable inputs; regulators must update guidelines to recognize new reagent regimes; and mine planners must weigh the opportunity cost of diverting plant capacity to low-grade material. Moreover, glycine itself, while benign relative to cyanide, still requires thoughtful recycling and stewardship to prevent chemical drift into surrounding ecosystems. Early adopters therefore serve a dual role: proving the metallurgical case and mapping the operational safeguards future users can replicate.

If Windarra’s trial delivers the recovery improvements Draslovka anticipates, it will add momentum to a broader industry trend toward in-situ and secondary-resource extraction, where mining companies search for value not by digging deeper pits but by applying smarter chemistry and automation to material already mined. For communities near legacy sites, that approach could mean fewer new tailings dams and a faster reclamation timeline. For investors, it represents another lever—alongside renewable power and electrified haulage fleets—for meeting decarbonization targets without sacrificing output.

In the meantime, Draslovka’s dual-unit structure provides a snapshot of how suppliers are repositioning: chemicals alone no longer suffice; data analytics alone lack the physical interface to effect change. By marrying reagents, sensors, and machine-learning insight, the company believes it can shorten the feedback loop from laboratory innovation to plant-floor value. Windarra, with its mixed-metal tailings and public profile, offers a timely proving ground.

Sources

• https://im-mining.com/2024/08/06/draslovkas-glycine-leaching-tech-to-be-tested-on-gold-nickel-tailings-at-windarra/