Dyno Nobel, a business of Incitec Pivot Limited (IPL), has announced that it will supply Fortescue Metals Group’s Iron Bridge Magnetite Project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region with its DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY™ blasting technology. The six-year performance-based contract builds on Dyno Nobel’s existing relationship with Fortescue in the Pilbara. The company says DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY tailors the explosives energy to the rock properties in a blast hole, resulting in higher energy blasting for harder rock types – such as magnetite – and less intense blasting for softer orebodies, waste and overburden.

Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific President Greg Hayne welcomed the contract win. “Customers are increasingly coming to appreciate how DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY can reduce downstream capital and processing costs, whilst improving productivity and reducing emissions from blasting,” Hayne said. In 2019, Fortescue operations managers visited Dyno Nobel’s operations in the Iron Range of Minnesota and Michigan, USA, where DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY emulsion technology is being used successfully on hard taconite deposits similar to Iron Bridge’s magnetite orebodies. The six-year contract commenced in February 2022. By mid-decade, Dyno Nobel will provide 25,000 t per year of DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY emulsion for use at Iron Bridge.