Agnico Eagle’s automation journey at the Kittilä gold mine in northern Finland has recently seen the operation run a full year of autonomous truck haulage using Sandvik’s AutoMine® system.
The operation has been using the AutoMine automation system for Sandvik loaders in production for several years, but the autonomous truck haulage fleet milestone is more recent.
Kittilä, the largest gold mine in Europe, uses AutoMine on its Toro™ TH663i truck to keep running as long as possible. It is loaded by an autonomous Toro LH621i up to surface dumping.
Jari Kolehmainen, Production Manager at Kittilä Mine, said: “Nowadays our miners can monitor the machines’ operation and autonomous production cycles from the comfort and safety of the control room. The mine’s productivity and safety have increased, and we are excited to see what the future will bring, as we know that there is even more potential to be gained with Sandvik’s cutting-edge technologies.”