Modern Mining October 2019

productivity, allowing mines to operate successfully in economic climates which could see the demise of conventional operations. They also point out that it allows mining to go into areas that were previously regarded as either unsafe or uneconomic or even a combination of both. McCoy adds that automation helps address another important issue which is looming ever larger for mining companies – the reluctance of many new recruits to the mining industry to accept the labour intensive work traditionally associated with mining. “The only way around this challenge is to have high levels of mechanisation and, where appropriate, automation as well. Having been brought up in the age of the cell phone and the internet, youngsters today, of course, are totally at home with the digitali- sation of mining.” As a final point on the benefits of automation, McCoy emphasises the beneficial effect it has on maintenance costs and machine life. “Machines operating autonomously work in a constant and predictable cycle and are not subjected to the same conditions they experience when manually oper- ated,” he says. “This was proved at Finsch where the trucking loop delivered a 30 % reduction in mainte- nance costs and a 35 % increase in the service life of equipment over its life. This experience has been

repeated at other sites and we’re confident that the new systems going in at mines such as Syama will show similar savings, particularly since many of these new mines have been – or will be – designed from the ground up for digitalisation, including auto- mation. We believe that digitalisation is here to stay and that it will revolutionise the mining industry over the next few years.” Photos courtesy of Sandvik and Resolute Mining

A Sandvik AutoMine ® operator station.

October 2019  MODERN MINING  33