VOL. 09 | ISSUE 1 | Spring 2026
Agents of
Reinvention
The People Leading Reinvent Mining Effort
Up to the Challenge
Reinvent Mining is strengthening Freeport against higher costs and lower ore grades by reexamining and modernizing longstanding industry practices. The goal is simple: Reduce unit costs by pulling every available lever — and invent new ones where needed.
At its core, Reinvent Mining asks everyone to challenge everything. While that challenge spans the organization, a small group of specialists is leading the way, working behind the scenes to align and guide Freeport’s effort.
“There are a lot of good ideas in this company,” said Steve Bradbury, Director-Operations Strategy. “Reinvent Mining is about making sure the thinking behind those ideas is put to the right use. It’s our job to get that bird’s-eye view, share it across the organization and make sure we’re all moving toward the same destination, even if we’re taking different paths.”
Bradbury is one of the lead architects of Reinvent Mining, and from that vantage point he has a clear view of how the effort is taking shape across the organization. It includes a pipeline of changes to haulage and processing, implementation of automation and AI, and – more than anything else – momentum.
Built to scale
Much of that momentum is happening in Morenci under the watchful eye of Danny Benavidez.
A member of a multi-generational Freeport family, Benavidez built his career at the company’s New Mexico operations before moving to Morenci as its new Projects Integration Manager. He arrived with a clear mandate: Sharpen short-range planning, ore control, payload and fragmentation.
Both Bradbury and Benavidez said Morenci’s position as Freeport’s largest North America producer meant even incremental gains in those areas could deliver outsized returns. And while “incremental” might sound modest, it hardly captures the impact of the work under way.
Targeted changes to drilling and blasting helped drive record throughput, while the introduction of a shovel operator scorecard increased average truckloads to 270 tons from roughly 260 tons. Benavidez pointed out the gains weren’t about individual performance, but shared understanding – making the data visible, meaningful and tied to a common goal across the operation.
“It’s our job to get that bird’s-eye view, share it across the organization and make sure we’re all moving toward the same destination, even if we’re taking different paths.”
STEVE BRADBURY | DIRECTOR-OPERATIONS STRATEGY
“Once people could see the data and understand how their decisions showed up in the result, it changed the conversation,” Benavidez said. “It was a gateway. It created alignment, pride and even a little competition, and that’s what’s helping us move the needle here.”
Despite the successes at Morenci, Benavidez believes the bigger breakthroughs are the inroads made toward improvements at other sites.
While many Reinvent Mining’s efforts are taking shape at Morenci, they were never meant to stay there. The tools and approaches being used now were developed with scale in mind and sharing them across the sites remains a core element of this initiative and the professionals behind it.
Up and coming
Morenci may anchor many Reinvent Mining’s discussions, but the work itself doesn’t always begin there.
At Cerro Verde, work is underway implementing in-pit crush and convey, or IPCC, a proven mining technique that has been used by Freeport in the past. While its use in the company’s North America operations partially was sidelined due to costs, it is being viewed in a new light thanks to Reinvent Mining.
According to Steven Bastian, Chief Mine Engineer-FM Technology Tucson, the in-pit crusher being built in South America is permanent, located in an area where it should not be at risk of future relocation. For its consideration at Morenci, Bastian says the team is looking at ways to make it more flexible and mobile, capable of adjusting to future mining activities.
With Freeport for over two decades, Bastian has been involved with initiatives ranging from monitoring haul truck data in a precursor to Remote Asset Monitoring Process (RAMP) to Leach to the Last Drop. It is experience that has shown him the value Freeport can deliver, and why he has faith in Reinvent Mining’s potential and the ability of his team to leverage IPCC in a new way.
“When I started on Reinvent Mining, we created a heat map of where our costs were going,” Bastian said. “It became clear early on that some of our higher costs were associated with things like moving material and leaching. In-pit crush and convey has the potential to help address both of those, but we must be very strategic about it.”
While Cerro Verde’s in-pit crush and convey is more about necessity – replacing an existing mill crusher being mined out by their long-term mine plan – use at Morenci is more about opportunity. Bastian’s job is to find that opportunity. He and his team are evaluating its use for lower value material, resizing and moving it out of the way for rehandling and leaching, freeing up haul trucks for more valuable material.
Currently in feasibility studies, in-pit crush and convey is being eyed for implementation at Morenci in 2030 and beyond.
All roads lead to ReMi
As Freeport looks to maximize throughput and payloads, material haulage also is getting course corrections.
Behind the wheel there? Brian Njenga, Business Solution Architect III.
With over a decade at Freeport, Njenga’s roles in mine engineering and MIS provided insight into how the company’s systems worked together, eventually helping him lead business improvement initiatives.
Now, Njenga works to find innovative, cost-efficient solutions to push bottlenecks further downstream in the value chain, maximizing use of costlier assets. One focus area is haulage efficiency through autonomy and increased truck capacity.
Haulage advancements pursued through Reinvent Mining have the potential to drive down costs in an essential component of the mining process. Without it, factors like employee retention and input costs stress the company’s current operations and expansion plans.
Those challenges are not unique and extend across the industry, Njenga said.
“We recognized there’s no getting away from this and decided to address it head-on,” he said. “That’s why we’re the first in the United States to make such significant investments in everything from autonomous haulage to ultra-class haul trucks. We’re leading the way, and our goal is to find solutions where they exist, and where they don’t, partner to shape ones that help us achieve our full potential.”
From process to progress
Achieving full potential is a recurring theme across Reinvent Mining, and processing is no exception.
Umut Erol, Director-Metallurgy and Strategic Planning, said progress there is rarely as simple as deploying new solutions. As part of one of the first Reinvent Mining groups, Erol said the team quickly recognized much of Freeport’s portfolio consists of mature assets built around century-old processing methods that make step change improvements difficult.
Still, progress is possible.
Erol pointed to an upcoming improvement to Bagdad’s hydrocyclones – classification equipment that separates materials in a liquid slurry based on particle size and density – that could help Bagdad to improve throughput and recovery. This is one of many smaller changes that could be replicated elsewhere.
“There’s no silver bullet here,” Erol said. “There’s no one project we can point to that can overcome the challenges we face. Instead, we are approaching processing with an eye towards stacking smaller, incremental improvements throughout the system.”
The long-term vision is a concentrator that automatically responds to changing ore conditions, allowing employees to focus on managing exceptions. While that ideal may never be fully realized, Erol said the vision is about making sure each step moves sites away from operationally demanding systems and toward more efficient use of resources.
Or, as lead architect Steve Bradbury, Director Operations Strategy, put it, it’s about the future.
“Look at any of our sites, and you’ll see the faces of families that have helped us mine copper for countless generations,” Bradbury said. “Reinvent Mining is about being able to look at those families, look at the faces of behind our success, and say we can do better – we have to do better. And if we do, this is a company that can go for countless generations more.”
“There’s no silver bullet here. There’s no one project we can point to that can overcome the challenges we face. Instead, we are approaching processing with an eye towards stacking smaller, incremental improvements throughout the system.”