In its own mine operation’s regular publication Revista Antapaccay, Edition 61, Peruvian copper mining company Minera Antapaccay talks about its impressive autonomous drill program progress. A year ago Minera Antapaccay marked a milestone both for itself and for parent company Glencore when its first autonomous drill rig went operational. Today, it has four autonomous drilling rigs running (three electric and one diesel), demonstrating it says its commitment to the mining of the future. Antapaccay is using the OEM-agnostic ARDVARC system from FLANDERS. Interestingly it points ou ..read more

New Gold’s Rainy River gold operation northwest of Fort Frances, Ontario and Glencore’s Antapaccay copper mine in Peru have both benefitted from deployment of SmartRView technology from Canadian company Cascadia Scientific on mine haul trucks which can then be used to identify road segments with higher fuel intensity, such as uneven grading and inconsistent slopes, and these areas marked for improvements. This has resulted in significant fuel and emissions savings for both mines. Cascadia Scientific uses precision fuel flow meters, corrected for temperature and viscosity to capture highly ..read more

While South Africa leads the world in regulating the field of collision prevention in mining, a key challenge in implementing effective solutions is to secure the buy-in and collaboration of all the people involved. Speaking as a panellist at the recent Investing in Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town, Booyco Electronics CEO Anton Lourens reminded delegates that the available world class technology is just one aspect of the solution. The African Mining Indaba panel session on Collision Prevention attracted so much interest that there was standing room only, indicating the high leve ..read more

RheEnergise, a UK company that is developing a new and advanced form of long-duration hydro-energy storage system, is to build its first-of-a-kind demonstrator of the system at Sibelco’s mining operations at Cornwood, near Plymouth. Work onsite to build the demonstrator will start imminently with its commissioning to start in September 2024. The power generated by RheEnergise’s HD Hydro demonstrator – it has a peak power production of 500 kW – will support Sibelco’s mining operations at times of high energy demand and support the company’s work to decarbonise its operations. The Cornwood site ..read more

EnviroGold Global Ltd, the technology company seeking to enable the global mining industry to monetise valuable metals contained in mine waste and tailings including gold, silver, copper, zinc, and nickel, has provided an update on its plans to demonstrate and commercialise its proprietary leaching technology – the NVRO Clean Leach Process. EnviroGold has selected a manufacturer to construct the processing unit that will be used to demonstrate the NVRO Clean Leach Process to several potential customers, including major global mining companies. In addition, EnviroGold says it has received ..read more

Vale has reported its Q1 2024 results, where the stand out figures are for iron ore whose production increased from 66.8 Mt in Q1 2023 to 70.8 Mt in Q1 2024. A big bonus was seen in its Northern System, namely at S11D, where iron ore production was up by 1.4 Mt year on year from 16.32 Mt to 17.71 Mt. This was S11D’s highest Q1 output since 2020, with Vale stating that continued asset reliability initiatives had secured greater operational stability during the rainy season. Eduardo Bartolomeo, Vale CEO, gave some clues to the reasons for the improved performance in the webcast discussion on the ..read more

Papua New Guinea copper & gold mining major Ok Tedi Mining Ltd (OTML) has announced a record production result for the first quarter of 2024, with an achievement of 26,114 dry metric tonnes (dmt) of copper, marking a substantial increase of 61% compared to the same period last year which was 16,265 dmt. This record production has been complemented with a safe start to the year with a Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) of zero (0) and Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) of 0.22 compared to 2023 with LTIFR and TRIFR recorded at 0.21 and 0.63 respectively. Unlike in the past ..read more

More specifics on one of the major miners set to get Caterpillar’s highly anticipated early learner battery electric haul trucks. In its just published 2023 Sustainability Report, Freeport McMoRan says that it is “planning a trial with Caterpillar of an electric prototype truck at Sierrita in late 2024.” This will be among a group of early learner battery trucks heading out to key customers from Caterpillar this year – Newmont has already said it will be the first to get one at Cripple Creek & Victor (CC&V) gold mine in Colorado. Additional early learner units are heading to mines ..read more

CIMIC Group has entered into an agreement with funds advised by Elliott Advisors (UK) Ltd (Elliott) regarding the acquisition by CIMIC of an additional 10% equity interest in Thiess, a leading global mining services provider. The acquisition, for a purchase price of A$320 million ($210 million), increases CIMIC’s ownership of Thiess to 60%. CIMIC and Elliott will continue to have equal board representation while CIMIC will strengthen its governance over the day-to-day operations of the company. Consequently, CIMIC will fully consolidate Thiess in its financial accounts. The acquisition will be ..read more

At the MINEXCHANGE SME conference in February 2024 in Phoenix, Wenco International Mining Systems’ President and CEO, Andrew Pyne, presented on open autonomy. He began by suggesting that it may not be business as usual for AHS in the medium to long term. “What we’ve seen in mining, is that the adoption of autonomy in more complex environments – that aren’t the Pilbara in Western Australia – is starting to stagnate. We are starting to see fleets being decommissioned and we are seeing some real adoption challenges. We are also seeing some really interesting evolutions in the early adopters of au ..read more