"We can take about one billion out of this business's cost and add about two billion in additional value."
A metre of advance, a metre of roof support, a metre of blasted rock — to recover a seam a fraction of that size. Because a metre is what a person needs to get in and drill.
Tighten the drill pattern. Lighter, cheaper explosive. Ninety centimetres of advance needs ninety centimetres of roof support — and a cleaner blast sends cleaner ore to the plant.
Timber suppliers had been cutting logs to a metre. Cut them to ninety centimetres and the offcuts add up to whole extra pieces. Their cost came down, their margin went up — and nobody's price was squeezed.
Suppliers, buyers, quality engineers and mining engineers had to agree, test it, and prove it viable and safe before a single blast changed. The roof bolts were reviewed — and left alone. The evidence said they were fine.
The savings are not negotiated. They are designed.
Procurement is not chasing paper and negotiating contracts. It is seeing how a contract sits inside a process, then asking whether the process itself is right — one integrated cost line across every category in the sector, not a set of silos.