COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC ELEMENTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

The assessment of mineral resources or the ore reserves involves a range of technical and economical activities backed by the approved technical rules at the global level, including the laws and circumstances of action at the international trade level of mining activities – basic metals. In the contemporary environment the determination of mineral resources and consequently of ore reserves should be a product of a special technical-economical evaluation – which is widely known as Feasibility Study. The calculation process of ore quantity, which is considered as geological resource, is quite complex and therefore for such cases the state of art software is being utilized, which enables a decomposition of interest area into the so called block modeling, which are set according to exploitation units when mining becomes operational. Ranging of volumes or certain masses from the resources into the ore corresponds with the composition of usable metals whereby the value 1 ton of ore is equal to the cost of its extraction. The limit value is defined as “Cutoff grade”, which usually serves for quotation of metals in the world market, on one side, and in the “work trade and capital”, on the other. The economic evolution of a resource origin is strongly linked with the term ore. This paper deals with economical limitation of the ore meaning, it determines the equivalent of metal and the cutoff grade as dynamic size dictated from the global and local market circumstances. The cutoff grade concept is explained in details, both from technical as well as economical and strategic point of view that this indicator gains in the current conditions prevailing in the world