One solution to avoiding huge greenfield infrastructure costs, whether for building new asphalt roads or maintaining ice roads could be utilising airships. According to a report in Bloomberg, Robin Young, the CEO of Amur Minerals, is looking at the use of airships in Siberia, where forbidding winters and poor roads make it a challenge to get equipment to site. Amur’s Kun-Manie nickel and copper project licence area is approximately 950 km² in area and is located 700 km northeast of the city of Blagoveshchensk.
The alternative would be spending about $150 million building a 350 km road to haul in mining equipment.Peter Hambro, Executive Chairman of gold producer Petropavlovsk, told Bloomberg that he has invested in a maker of the airships and foresees the mining industry adopting them. “To build a bridge to take a Toyota Land Cruiser isn’t horrifically expensive,” Hambro said. “To build a bridge that will take a Caterpillar 777 is very, very expensive.” With better designs and more efficient use of buoyant helium that can’t ignite in normal conditions, airship makers such as Worldwide Aeros and Hybrid Air Vehicles say they’re negotiating their first sales to the mining industry to complement truck and rail transport.
Hambro said he would consider ordering one in the future for use in Russia’s Far East. Hybrid Air has developed and tested its non-rigid craft capable of performing in storm winds and conditions typical of Siberia and the Canadian tundra, spokesman Chris Daniels was quoted as saying. These are the most likely regions where a lighter-than-air vehicle might get used. Both Hybrid Air and Worldwide Aeros need to pass flight tests to get authority to fly their airships. Hybrid Air is expecting to get its certification within two to three years, Daniels said.
Hybrid Air is in talks with two companies that supply transport services to mining companies in Canada and expects to sign orders in the coming months for delivery as early as 2016, Daniels said. The airship will contain a rigid structure underneath the inflated canopy to carry 48 passengers and the cargo, he said. Technological developments have helped manufacturers to build airships with larger lifting capacity and the ability to land and take off more often. Hybrid Air is constructing a 400 ft version with the capacity to carry 50 t of cargo.
Worldwide Aeros is building airships about 500 ft long, with a zeppelin-like rigid structure designed to carry loads as heavy as 250 t at speeds of more than 100 miles per hour, according to CEO Igor Pasternak. The aircraft can ferry mining equipment to roadless terrain because they are light and can take off and land vertically. Fuel costs are about a third of a cargo plane. Worldwide Aeros is planning to build a fleet of 24 airships to serve potential user industries, including mining. Worldwide Aeros would operate the airships, which would be available for hire by customers. of which it estimates about a quarter are likely to be mining companies.
