"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.