A new era is dawning for the innovative truck concepts from Netherlands-based mining truck company ETF HOLDING BV, with a management buyout led by Geoffrey Ejzenberg, former Chief Client Officer and Noel Jans, former Chief Technology Officer. They have set up a new company under the name BEHAULT, which stands for Belgian Haulage Technology and which has moved its head office to the innovation incubator site on the former Belgian coal mine sites at “Incubathor” in Genk, Belgium.
BEHAULT is developing a step change overhaul of the ETF concept with its engineering- and design-team having years of experience with designing new products for military and space applications. Currently BEHAULT is developing the BHT5240, a 240 t (semi-) autonomous SHEV (Serial Hybrid Electric Vehicle). BEHAULT is developing the new haul truck around its cyber-physical system (CPS). This approach makes autonomy much more efficient because of the tight integration of computing devices, actuation and control, networking infrastructure and sensing capacity. CPS is a holistic approach of designing new machines that enables capability, adaptability, scalability, resilience, safety, security and usability.
The SHEV design allows BEHAULT to capitalise on the known advantages of EVs with respect to torque, regeneration of energy and control, without making any changes to the mining infrastructure, enabling larger throughput and resulting in savings up to 70% ($ per tonne km) as compared to conventional design haul trucks. The adaptability enabled by the CPS allows conversion of the SHEV into a BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle) or TA-EV (Trolley Assisted-Electric Vehicle) in less than a day.
But the even bigger news, is that ETF, now BEHAULT, has been in technical due diligence since April 2018 with one of the global big three in mining trucks, namely OJSC ‘BELAZ’. After this validation period, its General Director has confirmed ETF’s multi axle & modular design as “the potential way forward for haulage in surface mining”.
BELAZ itself is well known for being innovative, having been the first in the world to introduce electric drives to serial mining trucks production many years ago and more recently building the first electric drive 100 t class truck and the world’s largest mining truck, the 450 t payload model 75710. BEHAULT’s designs have passed BELAZ’s rigorous reviews to the point where it has been decided to have a more formal partnership. There will be joint engineering and assembly of the trucks, most likely at BELAZ’s Zhodino, Belarus main factory, which makes sense given its innovation strategy plan for the future.
Service and maintenance support on the mine site is another area where BELAZ will be able to provide the required back up in terms of warranty, spare parts and expertise. However, as widely accepted in the industry, electric vehicles such as the BEHAULT trucks will require much less frequency in maintenance in replacement of spare parts.
The other big news is that an advisory board is being assembled with some big names including as chairwoman Michelle Ash no less, former Barrick Chief Innovation Officer, current GMG Chair and CEO of mining software giant Dassault GEOVIA. Other names include: Geoff Hayes, Director Deal Advisory within the KPMG Toronto natural resources practice, Jimmy Fitzpatrick, Lean Operations Champion, former Group Director at transportation group Ryder and currently VP at Rexnord, a former C-level manager at a leading mining contractor, as well as an Australian mining university professor. More members to strengthen the management team will be announced soon.
