Case Study: Nyrstar (global metals producer) achieves fast, accurate multi‑period planning and millions saved with DELMIA Quintiq

Solving a metals and mining puzzle in seven countries

Nyrstar is a global integrated mining and metals company headquartered in Zürich with ~4,100 employees and operations across seven countries in Europe, North America and Australia. After acquiring additional mines, the company faced a dramatic increase in operational complexity: varied feed mixes, site-specific processing capabilities, depleted major suppliers in Australia forcing sourcing from many small mines, long time-zone spans, volatile zinc prices and tangled feedback loops. Its spreadsheet-plus-optimizer approach could only do single-period planning, lacked cross-team visibility, and produced costly deviations worth millions of euros annually.

Nyrstar implemented DELMIA Quintiq, integrated with SAP, in a two‑phase rollout (material movement planning followed by a multi-period blending/consumption optimizer) starting at HQ and then across production sites. The solution delivered faster, more accurate multi-period optimization, removed planning errors, improved data visibility and collaboration, cut scenario computation times from days to hours, shifted planners’ time from mostly data gathering to planning (30/70 to 80/20), and strengthened treasury forecasting and working-capital control—enabling measurable cost savings and better strategic decision making.

Nyrstar