Modern Mining October 2023

DIGITAL MINE

With highly versatile Automatic Identification and Data Capture solutions, including RFID/ IoT, Synertech focuses on innovation technologies for industry process optimisation. Digitising the Track & Trace of Civil Explosives for South Africa

J ohan Weenink, the Managing Director of Synertech, says “Synertech has always been at the forefront of digitisation technologies. We are proud to have established a great working relationship with TTE-Europe GmbH, where we have been working with Frank Hirthammer, the Senior Partner Manager and his team of professionals. The recent adoption into our digitisation portfolio of the TTE Explosives Track and Trace solution is our most recent step in providing a greater scope of services for our customers”.

Unique identification of explosives is essential if accurate and complete records of explosives are to be kept at all stages of the explosives supply chain. This should allow the identification and the traceability of an explosive from its production site and its first placing on the market, right up until its final use. Such unique identification is required with a view to preventing misuse and theft, and to assist law enforcement authorities in tracing the origins of lost or stolen explosives. As with any business process, there will always be various pertinent information that needs to be captured, stored and made available for reporting and compliance purposes. In order to achieve this, we envisage that organisations and companies will need to adopt digitisation in one form or another either to replace

or augment predomi nantly manual processes. We

have been in the track and trace business using automation technology for many years, with 2023 being Synertech’s 20 th year in business. We selected to work with TTE because they have a tried and tested solution, based on legislative requirements for explosives track and trace. The TTE solution is well suited to this purpose with many years of inter national operational deployment (internationally by explosives manufacturers and end users). The TTE Track and Trace of Explosives system was designed and developed primarily on the European Union directives, and has evolved into a highly efficient piece of technology. Based on user experience, we believe it is the most widely used system internationally for the track and trace of explosives, with over 500 com panies in Europe, Asia and America having adopted and entrenched the system. Some early adopters in Africa are in the implementation phase of their digi tisation projects associated with explosives track and trace. In terms of exposure in South Africa, there have been engagements that started a number of years ago and these discussions are still ongoing with key stakeholders in industry and governance. We recently exhibited the solution at the A-OSH 2023 Expo where we received an overwhelming level of interest at the presentations made and subsequent demonstrations with several parties indicating their commitment to implementation projects. Key advantages of organisations going digital for explosives track and trace go far beyond the legisla tive obligations. The ability to improve the day-to-day efficiency of staff at the place of explosives manufac ture, collection, storage and deployment are crucially

TS Initiation systems manufacturing detonators.

34  MODERN MINING  October 2023