Newtrax Technologies Inc, one of the leading providers of IoT solutions for underground hard rock mines – has been selected by Gold Fields to provide a mine-wide Tracking and Proximity Detection system at the Invincible underground mine at its St Ives operations.

Located near Lake Lefroy in the prolific gold-producing Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia, St Ives produces over 360,000 oz/y from its open pit and underground operations, making it one of the leading gold producers in Australia. The Invincible mine, a successful open pit which transitioned to underground operations in 2017, is set to be Gold Fields’ mine of the future, envisioned to be fully autonomous and remotely controlled.

The Newtrax Personnel and Equipment Tracking solution, which runs on the patented MineHop™network, will be deployed on all of St Ives Invincible underground equipment, and used by all underground miners.

The Newtrax Proximity Detection system utilises MineProx’s™ sub-GHz RF technology to create a peer-to-peer network of equipment and miners. “Not only does it give out proximity warnings, the system also provides alerts to loader operators that a truck is on its way even before it appears in its line of sight, enabling operators to prepare for the truck and improve mine production.”

Gold Fields is actively investigating disruptive technology options across all of their mines, and Newtrax says it is proud to be partnering with them on their innovation journey.

“It’s fantastic to see Gold Fields selecting Newtrax once again, to help increase safety and productivity in their mines. We’ve been working with each other for a number of years at many of their sites including South Deep in South Africa, St Ives and Granny Smith. Now it’s our chance to contribute once again to Gold Fields technology roadmap.”, said Simon Waghorn, Vice President APAC, Newtrax.

System implementation is expected to begin in autumn of 2018.