The three finalists in the Swedish Mining Innovation Award 2020 have been announced. The prize, which was established in 2019, is awarded by the national strategic innovation program Swedish Mining Innovation, and rewards something that is innovative and very useful for the mining industry.

The three finalists are Orexplore for their X-ray technology for drill cores, Widefind for their positioning system for people and equipment and Minalyze for their scanner of large volumes of drill core samples. The statement said “all innovations move the industry towards increased efficiency, which affects both sustainability and profitability.”

“Two of the finalists, Orexplore and Minalyze, have innovations that help to map and assess deposits in a more efficient way than is done today. This is a challenge for mining companies around the world and the market for these innovations is large. The third finalist Widefind has a unique solution that enables a very accurate positioning of both people and assets underground, something that is extremely important from both a safety and efficiency perspective. Here, too, the market is judged to be large and international.”

“All finalists contribute in a very nice way to put Swedish mining innovation on the international map. The fact that the jury has chosen two finalists with similar application areas, Orexplore and Minalyze, shows that the area is extremely important and these innovations complement each other in a good way,” says Jenny Greberg, Program Director of Swedish Mining Innovation and Chairman of the jury.

“In summary, I want to say that very many impressive innovations were nominated for this year’s award. It feels as if this year’s theme for the nominated innovations was smart solutions to well-defined problems that make major improvements in the industry. We also see a consistent theme that successful innovations come from our Swedish collaboration model. Many of the nominated innovations have been developed in collaboration with different types of actors,” said Greberg.

The jury consists of Chairman Jenny Greberg, Program Director Swedish Mining Innovation, Lennart Evrell, Board Member SCA, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, ICA and Epiroc, Maria Sunér Flemming, CEO Svemin and Margareta Groth, Unit Manager Industrial Development, Vinnova.

There will be more information about the three finalists presented in the coming weeks. The final winner of the Swedish Mining Innovation Award will be awarded at Svemin’s Autumn Meeting on 17 November.