Aramine on June 14 marked a major milestone, celebrating its 50th anniversary with a special event at its factory in Gardanne, Provence, where the Melkonian family’s journey in serving the underground mining sector began in 1975 with the founding of Continental Industrie.
Started by entrepreneurs Jacques and Angèle Melkonian – the company grew initially through its supply of underground mining services to the French uranium industry and then through its representation of Wagner, which later became Atlas Copco and then Epiroc, in the French and Francophone African markets. They also built up a significant spare parts business through a warehouse in Aix-en-Provence. The company was taken over by siblings Genevieve, Marc and Christophe Melkonian in 1994, and since then they haven’t looked back – setting up in addition to the previous businesses a successful reman offering for equipment second life.
Aramine’s new factory and office space will open in Q1 2027
But arguably the most notable development was its evolution into becoming an OEM in its own right in 2006 with the launch of its own underground loader, the L130D. Since then, against the odds and with some doubters in the industry, including from the existing dominant big OEMs, Aramine has managed to carve out a very successful market in the OEM space, especially narrow vein mining, which was not particularly well served with high quality machines optimised for that purpose. Its main strength has been in in loaders and trucks and in 2016 it was an early mover into green powertrains with the L140B. Today it has machines in 88 countries.
Ahead of the half century celebrations, at bauma 2025 in Munich, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore had the chance to discuss its progress as an underground electric fleet provider with Co-President Marc Melkonian. At the stand was its Energy Module EM224 which powers its new L440B Mining Loader – the module at the show was the second to have been built by the company for its second L440B unit.
The first L440B is already fully operational with its trial phase having been completed in 2024. “In the development of the L440B, we initially took all of our electrical technology, and installed it on the base frame of our L350D machine – this was the prototype. In tandem with that testing of electrical capability of this size of unit, we also then designed a completely new machine, because our aim was not just to convert a diesel machine, but to design a fully electric loader from the ground up for the purpose of electric operation. To make the most optimised electric machine, you need to be able to calculate the best ratio of stored energy, available voltage and delivered power; and once you have that you will know the maximum possible weight for the machine as well as the possible speed and tramming capacity. So at the end we produced the L440B to be as competitive in the market as possible to the equivalent diesel machine.”
The L440B is designed with the same philosophy as the smaller L140B Mining Loader – especially in relation to Aramine’s unique Quick Replacement System (QRS) for battery swapping, which is the most compact in the market. It is self centering, self locking and doesn’t require any regular maintenance. That is what a lot of underground mines want and need in an electric machine – a battery solution that is extremely robust and compact and can be used in existing mines. The L140B was designed for 3 m by 3 m galleries – but even with the L440B, being compact is extremely important.
The first L440B is operating in Canada today, while after bauma 2025 the second unit went to work in Europe. Melkonian: ”Beyond that, the L440B order book has several additional machines which are earmarked for delivery globally. It has a lot of potential in the market due to its 4.6 t capacity – where there is a lot of demand and apart from our machine, there no other commercially available options at this size class. Our solution makes sense from a design, cost and performance point of view.”
As with the L140B, the charger is onboard with the battery module, including an independent charging cooler, so the mine has no need for expensive fixed external charging infrastructure – the battery requires a four-hour charge at 400V on any 32A socket. The customer just needs to have two battery modules for one loader to be able to achieve continuous operation. The batteries are 224 kW lithium iron phosphate with one battery module able to operate for five years of continuous use.
Another point is how Aramine is approaching the market with its BEVs, as many mining customers are now quite yet to make the electrification shift before they are able to kick the tyres and operate the technology first. “We accept sending the machine, with a signed contract of course, but the customer only makes a downpayment and only pays for the majority of the machine after three months of operation. They try and test it so they can trust in what we are delivering. So far we are very satisfied with the result – and have only had some minor electrical components fail which we can quickly and easily replace.”
Is electrification levelling the playing field somewhat in the underground equipment market and helped give Aramine a step up in terms of market share? “The interesting thing about the market is that Sandvik, Epiroc and Aramine are all using different technologies for electric machines and that includes in some cases different battery chemistries but also different battery swapping and charging methodologies. We believe based on the success of the L140B that our approach is the most optimised up to the 4.6 t class of machine we are supplying with the L440B. Larger than this, things are different, but in this size class range, we think we have taken the right path. It is robust, flexible, doesn’t require any change at all in the mine; and in the case of the L440B has an ergonomic and enclosed cab.”
Melkonian did add that Aramine does have a long term plan to make larger machines than the L440B, for which more advanced design work will start in 2026, but will involve a whole new design technology and battery chemistry suited to that size class. “We think many of the larger BEV loaders today are not competitive for many mines from an battery power density, machine efficiency, components availability and overall cost perspective, and we think we will have something to offer there. Taking the L440B for example, some of the major components were designed specifically for us by partners like Danfoss and Bosch Rexroth, which is an advantage from both a customisation point of view but also in terms of availability.”
The success of the Aramine approach is reflected in the numbers – it has delivered over 60 units of the L140B, an impressive total, with the L440B now including two units and several on order as mentioned. These machines span five continents and all types of applications including high altitude, -35 to +40°C temperatures, many different commodities etc.
So after 50 years and with a major move into electrification, what is next for Aramine? “The underground mining industry is growing quite rapidly as many open pits face permitting difficulties and many ore deposits still open at depth. Actually, we had demand for more battery machines but our factory capacity meant we had to allocate some of that space just to meet demand for diesel machines.”
Melkonian adds: “There is so much potential also for underground mining due to many critical minerals that will have to accessed that way – and the perception of underground mining as an option, including for mine owners and their operators, is improving because the battery machines offer zero emissions – that means far better operator conditions but also far lower ventilation costs. It also opens up a lot of mining interest in Europe, as battery powered mining underground is so much more palatable from a sustainability point of view.”
The upshot of the demand projection is that Aramine is taking some big expansion steps to take it well into its next half century. Melkonian “Today we are an increasingly important actor in the underground equipment OEM stage, and we are meeting that head on by building a completely new factory, only about 1 km away from the existing Aix-en-Provence factory close to an old coal mine shaft that was on our land. This factory will allow us to triple our production – today we produce around 70 units per year – so we will be able to produce well over 200 units a year – a significant proportion of which in the new factory will be battery machines. We expect to open the new factory in Q1 2027.”
Notably, to also reflect how the company is changing, the plan going forward is to divide Aramine into two businesses – Aramine spare parts supply will form the majority of one company, and the original equipment manufacturing the other. Watch this space.