Adapting the ESSENZ Method to Assess Company-Specific Criticality Aspects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• This is a very interesting research work. Congratulations on the hard work!
• However, the paper is not very reader friendly:
  • You should probably improve the title of the article;
  • You should improve the writing in English. There are mistakes in the text and some sentences are hard to follow.
  • You do not only cover the criticality, as you mention it on several occasions, which is not obvious from the reading;
  • You need to explain more why company-specific criticality and social aspects are important.
  • The ESSENZ method considers resource efficiency in the context of sustainable development. You do not discuss enough with respect to CS-ESSENZ.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

This is a very solidly written, specialized article. The indicators give an opportunity to assess the criticality aspects of the raw materials management, react to social, economic and environmental impacts and check how the introduced innovations affect the mining companies condition. The numerical values that correspond to the individual parameters of the regional or local markets give the authors the illusion of readability. However, despite the enormous possibilities of this method, it requires from the authors a lot of experience and understanding of the structure of models, results and subsequent interpretation. Unfortunately, the manuscript being reviewed reveals a misunderstanding of the use of indicators and the model.

One of the important factors is the readability of indicator methods and the selection of indicators so that their values can be precisely measured or read. Authors who use indicator methods very well forget about it. The very idea of combining the two methods is quite risky. The introduced new indicators and their calculation methods introduce abrupt changes in the image. I also have doubts whether their definitions are well defined. Economic importance it suits this topic Critical raw materials; Dependency on import and Substitutability why the entire group of indicators in the availability group (Concentration of reserves, Concentration of mine production, Company concentration etc.) was used? The indicators overlap and darken the image.

The Authors do not understand the basic concepts used in the economy of mineral resources (abiotic resources). They analyze metals and so this is metal raw materials. Feasibility of exploration project (Line 170) the name of the indicator is described exactly as the stage in the mining project life cycle. In the management of a mining project, this stage is associated with an investment risk burdened with high uncertainty. Here there are factors such as: recognized uncertainty, uncertainty of the deposit model, uncertainty of estimated resources and many others. Everyone who does this must know it. Meanwhile, the authors write to it: supplying country, PPI (line 170-175).

Specific comments:

Line 85-87: delete the work plan

 

Figure 4. Ore stocks - the drawing shows that these are stocks. But such stocks can only arise after the mining stage. At this point, we have reserves in the management of mineral resources.

 

Figure 3. Political stability - this indicator does not match the other indicators in this group at all, and it is the only indicator that is Socio.

 

Line 297: referring to a supplement that could be another article is not helpful to the reader

 

Figure 5: how can i identify and track supply risk for REE. Each of them has a different value, in addition, there are no official data on concluded contracts.

 

Line 344 – 373: comment on one figure over half a page? Each node is discussed separately. In my opinion, you need to show the reader how to read it and then he or she will deal with it. Unless the drawing is unclear?

 

References:

Line 554: there are newer publications on this topic

 

I suggest you also read the work: Schrijwers et al 2020, Resources, Conservation and Recycling

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104617

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Respected Authors, 

I am happy to have the opportunity to review an interesting paper entitled "Adapting the ESSENZ Method to assess company-specific criticality aspects". However, I have the following comments and suggestions for respected authors:

1. The abstract is lacking with policy proposals based on finding
2. Meaningful interpretation of estimates is missing in abstract
3. Please elaborate on the ESSENZ and SCARCE in the introduction for a better understanding of readers ( although you have explained in supplementary material)
4. The contribution of the study is weak and need to elaborate as the introduction explains the method
5. How this differs from the developer of method i.e.  (Bach et al. 2016; Bach et al. 2017; Bach et al. 2019; Arendt et al. 2020)
6. Please also justify the need for study and also provide the reason to choose smartphones as a case study. Please also provide the characteristics of the study case 
7. Results discussion needs to improve as economic meaning and interpretation is completely missing in the light of scholarly articles and reports
8. The conclusion part also needs to enhance because this section sums up and provide the answers to the following questions
   1.  What ( we are going to do)
   2. How ( Methods, tools to get the aim of study)
   3. Whom ( the outcome of study, findings)
   4. outcomes meaning
   5. Policy proposals
   6. future direction/ short-coming

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

the article significantly increased its value after supplementation. For people who deal with indicators, it will be extremely interesting. The text understanding of the stages of mineral resource management has also been improved.

Line 181-185: The definition of the Feasibility of exploration project indicator is still quite wrong.

Do the authors understand that this indicator is ahead of mining production and resource determination? Please see the works on this topic. For example:

Rupprecht, S. Establishing the feasibility of your proposed mining venture. In International Platinum Conference ‘Platinum Adding Value’; The South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Johannesburg, South Africa, 2004; pp. 243–247.

Reviewer 3 Report

Respected Authors, 

I am really impressed with the revised version. Good luck for your publication