Mining Rate Required Calculator
Work out the production rate you must sustain to mine your reserves within a target mine life. Enter reserves and years, and it returns the required annual, monthly and daily mining rates for quick equipment and schedule sizing.
Enter Values
Before you rely on this: First-pass guide only. Verify safety-critical or regulated work against the relevant standards, your project requirements and a qualified professional.
How to use this calculator
- Enter your total mineable reserves in tonnes.
- Enter the target mine life in years that the schedule must hit.
- Optionally set operating days per year (default 350) to reflect your calendar; read the annual, monthly and daily rates.
How it works
Required annual rate = total reserves / target mine life. The daily rate divides the annual rate by operating days per year (default 350, allowing for maintenance and weather downtime), and the monthly rate divides the annual rate by 12.
Worked example
Worked example. For 50,000,000 t of reserves over a 10-year life at 350 operating days: annual rate = 5,000,000 t/yr, daily rate = 14,285.71 t/day, and monthly rate = 416,666.67 t/month.
Common mistakes
- Using 365 operating days when maintenance, weather and public holidays realistically cut available days to around 330-350.
- Sizing a fleet on the steady-state rate alone and ignoring the higher peak rates during ramp-up and pre-strip.
- Entering reserves in millions of tonnes as '50' instead of the full tonnage 50,000,000.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use ROM tonnes or ore-only tonnes?
Use the tonnes your target life is defined against. For total-material movement include waste; for ore-feed scheduling use ore tonnes and check the mill feed rate separately.
Why default to 350 operating days?
It is a common planning allowance leaving roughly 15 days a year for major maintenance and weather. Adjust it to your own availability data.
Related tools
- Mining Recovery & Dilution Impact Calculator
- Strip Ratio Sensitivity Calculator
- Capital Cost per Tonne Calculator
- Truck Count Calculator
- Crusher Throughput Calculator
- Mine Life Calculator
Explore more in Mining, Quarry, Earthworks, Drill & Blast.
Tip: Enter any known values to calculate the remaining results.
All calculations run in your browser. Your inputs are never saved or transmitted.