Demand for autonomous mining truck technology industry in China is growing rapidly, driven by the ageing workforce in mining, increased labour costs, a desire to boost efficiency as well as regulatory safety mandates. Therefore the competitive landscape also continues to heat up.

Along with TAGE Idriver, Waytous and EACON Mining, which have been widely covered in IM in recent years is CiDi Inc, which on November 7 filed an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), with China International Capital Corporation, China Securities International, and Ping An of China Asset Management (Hong Kong) as joint sponsors. If approved, CiDi will become the first publicly listed autonomous mining truck company in China. Its backers include the venture capital unit of Baidu, Sequoia China and Legend Holdings.

In the filing, CiDi states: “Our pioneering full-stack autonomous mining solution, METAMINE, automates labor-intensive mining operations by integrating our proprietary algorithms with widely-used autonomous driving hardware for commercial vehicles, enabling autonomous operation and remote monitoring of driverless mining trucks. A challenging but critical process in autonomous mining is deploying driverless mining trucks alongside existing human-driven vehicles at mining sites, as it is costly and often impractical to transition to fully autonomous mining operations within a short timeframe.”

It claims to have delivered the world’s largest driverless mining fleet operating with manned vehicles, it says according to data from China Insights Industry Consultancy Ltd (CIC), a market research consultant. CiDi adds: “Our autonomous mining trucks also significantly boosted mining efficiency to 104% of that of human-driven mining trucks, as certified by the National Institute of Metrology of China (NIM) in 2022.” It additionally claims that this makes CiDi “the first and only autonomous driving company in China to achieve such efficiency as of the Latest Practicable Date,” again citing CIC. The efficiency test compared nine of CiDi’s driverless mining trucks to nine human-driven trucks (with drivers working 8-hour shifts), all operating for 16 hours daily under otherwise the same conditions.

CiDi says it served 31, 44, 85 and 100 customers as of December 31, 2021, 2022 and 2023 and June 30, 2024, respectively. As of September 30, 2024, it says it had delivered 123 autonomous mining trucks and received indicative orders for 320 autonomous mining trucks and 206 sets of standalone autonomous truck systems. Key clients include the Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC) Cement Mine in Jurong, Jiangsu Province, where it says a fleet of autonomous EV mining trucks equipped with its technology had successfully operated for a total of 765,800 kilometres up to May 10 2024, having commercially run for over 500 days, hauling a total of 8.9 Mt of material, resulting in 4,489 t of carbon emissions savings. These are 60 t class SKT90E trucks supplied by SANY.

Internationally, it is liasing closely with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for potential deployment of autonomous haulage technology for the huge NEOM urban development project. On the R&D side CiDi has hubs in Changsha, Chongqing and Chengdu with projects including developing an all battery, cabless autonomous prototype truck.

It adds: “Our revenue increased from RMB77.4 million in 2021 to RMB132.6 million in 2023 with a CAGR of 30.9%, and increased significantly by 472.6% from RMB45.1 million in the six months ended June 30, 2023 to RMB258.5 million in the six months ended June 30, 2024. Our gross profit increased from RMB6.8 million in the six months ended June 30, 2023 to RMB44.4 million in the six months ended June 30, 2024.”

The company then includes some information about the autonomous mining truck industry in China. “In 2023, the total shipment of autonomous mining trucks in China was approximately 800 units. This is projected to increase to approximately 3,800 units in 2026 and further to over 13,000 units in 2030. Globally, the total shipment of autonomous mining trucks was approximately 1,200 units in 2023, and is expected to increase to approximately 6,000 units in 2026 and exceed 20,000 units in 2030. In 2023, the average price of autonomous mining trucks in China was approximately RMB2.5 million per unit, compared to over RMB5.0 million per unit in the international market.”

Again attributing figures to CIC, CiDi says China’s autonomous mining market is highly concentrated, with the top four players accounting for a total market share of 89.9% in terms of revenues from autonomous mining in the six months ended June 30, 2024, while the market share of each remaining player is below 5%.

CiDi adds: “China’s autonomous mining industry is rapidly expanding, with market size reaching RMB0.4 billion in 2023, representing approximately 35.4% of the autonomous driving market within closed environments. By 2030, the market is expected to grow significantly to RMB24.8 billion, at a CAGR of 78.4% from 2023 to 2030. The total addressable market size of China’s autonomous mining industry in 2023 was approximately RMB550 billion.”