Choosing a Mining LIMS: OnLIMS, CCLAS, LabWare and others

Most “best LIMS” lists are written for pharmaceutical and biotech laboratories, and most comparisons are written by a vendor that puts itself first. This one is also written by a vendor — us — so we set three rules. Every statement about another product links to a public source, consulted on 2 October 2026. Nothing about another vendor's price, because we do not know it and it is not ours to publish. And no table where we win every row: the criteria table below is meant to be used on us as much as on anyone else.

Who you will meet on a mining LIMS shortlist

Datamine: CCLAS and AssayNet

Datamine's laboratory page offers two LIMS products, CCLAS and AssayNet, and states that it connects validated laboratory results with Fusion, Production Accounting, MineMarket, MineScape, ERP, PIMS and geological databases [1]. Datamine's documentation describes CCLAS 6 as a LIMS for “mining and commercial laboratories”, “designed to support ISO 17025 certification” [2]. Buyers who remember CCLAS as an ABB product are not wrong: CCLAS 6 was released under ABB [3], and the product is now documented and marketed by Datamine [1][2]. Datamine acquired AssayNet, a Canadian LIMS provider for mine-site and environmental laboratories founded in 2000, in May 2023 [4]. Datamine itself has been part of Constellation Software's Vela Software division since July 2015 [5].

When it is a natural fit: an operation that already runs Datamine software for geology, mine planning or production accounting, and wants the laboratory inside that same suite.

LabWare

LabWare publishes a mining and metals page describing a “pre-configured Mining Template” built from mining best practice, a process hierarchy covering geology, mine exploration, process quality control, metallurgical studies, finished product shipping and environmental monitoring, and data exchange with enterprise systems via web services, file transfer and direct database communications [6]. LabWare serves many industries beyond mining, as its own site navigation shows [6].

When it is a natural fit: a corporate group standardizing one LIMS platform across laboratories in several industries.

Thermo Fisher Scientific: SampleManager LIMS

Thermo Fisher publishes a metals and mining page for SampleManager LIMS that refers to regulatory requirements such as ISO 17025, describes the LIMS as connecting the laboratory with production facilities, and lists integration with manufacturing execution systems (MES), process information management systems (PIMS) and ERP; it also references metal accounting processes [7].

When it is a natural fit: an organization whose priority is enterprise integration across lab, plant and business systems, often alongside Thermo Fisher instruments and services.

Others worth knowing

• LabKey Markets a mining LIMS delivered as a cloud platform; its page states “Secure SaaS deployment means zero on-prem hardware” [8].
• Confience Publishes a mining page stating support for ISO and EPA documentation requirements and interfaces to ERP and process-control systems [9].
• Contract laboratory groups Some offer their own LIMS as part of an outsourced laboratory. ALS, for example, states that “with any ALS mine laboratory, access to the LIM System known as GEMS” is provided [10]. That is not a software purchase — it is a decision about who operates the laboratory, and it deserves its own section below.

Criteria to choose — use them on every vendor, including us

The table does not score anyone. It lists what decides daily life in a mining, assay, smelter or environmental laboratory, and how to check each point in a demo rather than in a brochure.

Criterion	Why it matters	How to check it
Mining workflows out of the box	Fire assay, grade-control batches, routine plant points and environmental monitoring should be the product's model, not a configuration project.	Ask for a live fire assay batch from pulp weighing to certificate, on real screens.
Instrument capture on your bench	Every manual transcription is a data-integrity risk, and mining benches still run RS-232 balances next to modern ICPs.	Send your instrument list and ask, instrument by instrument, what is read today and how.
QA/QC that blocks release	CRMs, blanks and duplicates only protect the result if a failure stops sign-off.	Ask what happens when a standard fails at 3SD: report, or blocked approval with justification?
Deployment at the site	Mine-site labs often sit behind weak links. SaaS, on-premises and hybrid models behave differently when the WAN drops.	Ask what is installed where and what stops working without the internet link.
Who owns and administers the database	The analytical history of an orebody outlives contracts, vendors and contractors.	Ask where the database lives, who holds admin rights and what a full export contains.
Licensing model	Per-user, per-site, subscription and perpetual models scale very differently as headcount and contractors change.	Ask how cost changes if you add 20 users, a second lab or a contractor team.
Configuration after year one	New tests, instruments and price lists will keep coming; who makes those changes decides long-term cost.	Ask which changes the lab makes itself and which need the vendor.
Suite integration	If geology, planning and production accounting already run on one vendor's suite, that integration has real value.	List the downstream systems and ask for the integration method for each (file, ODBC, API).
Accreditation evidence	ISO/IEC 17025 assessors ask for records, not features.	Ask to see audit trail, locked results and how a three-year-old result is reconstructed.
Language and local support	Lab staff, assessors and support calls work in the local language and time zone.	Ask for the user interface, manuals and support hours in your language.

The decision before the software: own laboratory or outsourced

For many mine sites the real alternative to buying a LIMS is not another LIMS: it is outsourcing the laboratory, with the contractor's LIMS included in the service. That can be the right call — capital, scarce staff, elastic sample peaks and an existing ISO/IEC 17025 scope are real advantages of a good contract laboratory. What the contract rarely says is what happens to the record underneath: the sample states, batches, control charts, instrument imports and audit trail that make a certificate defensible years later. When the contract ends, that history stays in a database the owner never administered.

The alternative is to keep the system of record at home and buy the service on top of it. The LIMS does not leave when the contractor leaves. OnLIMS runs on the operation's own Microsoft SQL Server — on premises, cloud-hosted or under Citrix/RDS — and its management modules are licensed per site with unlimited users, so adding a contractor's analysts does not add licences. The licence is perpetual: the system keeps working and the data stays yours. We cover the full argument in Who Owns the Data When the Laboratory Is Outsourced?

Where OnLIMS fits — and where it does not

OnLIMS has been built by Online LIMS Canada Ltd. for mining, smelter, environmental and industrial production laboratories since 1989. It is a laboratory specialist: fire assay, batch and routine jobs, direct capture from 150+ instruments via RS232 plus 25+ via file parsers, worksheet-centred operation and QA/QC that blocks sign-off are the core of the product. It is zero-install client-server over Microsoft SQL Server, with English and Spanish support from Ontario, Canada and Santiago, Chile.

And the honest boundaries. OnLIMS is not a mine-planning, geology-modelling or production-accounting suite; if you want the laboratory inside such a suite, a suite vendor is the natural choice, and OnLIMS integrates with those systems by file or ODBC export instead. If your organization is standardizing one platform across pharmaceutical, clinical or other non-mining laboratories, a generalist platform will fit that mandate better. And if your policy requires a vendor-hosted SaaS LIMS with no database on your side, OnLIMS's model — your SQL Server, your data — is deliberately different.

For the general selection checklist, see How to select a mining LIMS.

Sources

Every statement about another vendor on this page comes from the public source linked below. All sources were consulted on 2 October 2026. Vendors change their products and pages; if something here is out of date, write to contact@onlims.com and we will correct it.

1. Datamine — Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for Mining (consulted 2026-10-02)
2. Datamine Product Documentation — CCLAS 6 (consulted 2026-10-02)
3. MINING.COM — “ABB releases its Cloud-ready CCLAS 6” (title consulted 2026-10-02)
4. Canadian Mining Journal — “Datamine acquires AssayNet LIMS for operating mines”, 15 May 2023 (consulted 2026-10-02)
5. Constellation Software — “CAE sells its mining division, Datamine, to Constellation Software”, 27 July 2015 (consulted 2026-10-02)
6. LabWare — End-to-End Laboratory Software for the Mining & Metals Industry (consulted 2026-10-02)
7. Thermo Fisher Scientific — SampleManager LIMS for metals and mining (consulted 2026-10-02)
8. LabKey — Mining LIMS (consulted 2026-10-02)
9. Confience — Laboratory Information Management Software for Mining (consulted 2026-10-02)
10. ALS — Lab design, build and operation (consulted 2026-10-02)

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Solution How to select a mining LIMS
• Article Who Owns the Data When the Laboratory Is Outsourced?
• Article The Cloud Exit Trend: Mining Laboratory LIMS and the Shift to On-Prem/Edge
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