This month’s Spotlight Feature Article focuses on the area of flotation, with Paul Moore looking at newer designs in the latest ‘future flowsheets’. Included within this is coarse particle flotation, or coarse particle recovery, which is billed by many in the industry as providing a way for mining companies to grind to coarser sizes, reduce energy consumption and costs, and recover valuable minerals and metals from tailings streams.
Eriez says it has won a contract to supply its HydroFloat technology to OZ Minerals’ Carrapateena copper-gold project in South Australia. The project’s goal is to increase the recovery of copper and gold from the ore through a more efficient and sustainable extraction process, Eriez says.
James Cooke, Eriez Australia Managing Director, said: “This is a significant milestone for our company, and we are proud to have been chosen as the preferred supplier for this innovative mining project.
“Our expertise in mineral processing, combined with our commitment to providing tailored solutions to our clients, made us the preferred choice for OZ Minerals. We look forward to working closely with their team to achieve the project’s objectives and deliver value to all stakeholders involved.”
HydroFloat coarse particle flotation technology has been used successfully at the likes of Newcrest Mining’s Cadia copper-gold project, in Australia, and at Anglo American’s El Soldado mine in Chile. It will also soon be commissioned at Anglo’s Quellaveco copper operations in Peru.
While the El Soldado copper operation in Chile may be one of Anglo American’s smaller assets, it has a big part to play as one of the company’s FutureSmart Mining™ hubs, piloting some of its innovative mining and processing technologies, according to Phil Newman, Anglo American’s Head of Innovation.
Including in this innovative technology bracket is Anglo American’s patented Hydraulic Dewatered Stacking (HDS) technology.
Newman explained: “Mineral processing operations commonly use large amounts of water for the recovery of valuable minerals. This ultimately results in the production of large volumes of wet tailings which are disposed in conventional tailings storage facilities. If not safely constructed and maintained, they pose a major risk to communities and the environment. Eliminating these facilities is a key objective for a safe and sustainable mining industry.”
With 75% of Anglo American’s assets globally located in water-constrained areas, the company must reduce its dependence on water and it is working on technologies to help it achieve closed loop operations with respect to water, according to Newman. HDS is a key enabler of its FutureSmart Mining innovation-led approach to mining and a major step towards moving the company closer to water-less mining and reducing its footprint.
HDS demonstrates a new way to safely dispose of mining by-products and accelerates Anglo American’s progress towards the end of wet tailings storage. Ultimately, it allows the company to reclaim and reuse water, its most precious and undervalued resource, and create stable, dry, economically viable land long after mining ends.
The adoption of coarse particle recovery (CPR), another valuable FutureSmart Mining technology, was instrumental in the development of HDS, according to Newman. “It allows larger-size particles of material to be processed, reducing the need for grinding to a smaller size, thereby lowering energy consumption,” he said. “It also makes it easier for us to capture and drain water during the processing phase and recycle it.”
HDS targets the geotechnical and water recovery performance of filtered tailings but without the carbon footprint, Newman claims. Laboratory and proof of concept testing has proved the robustness of fines-free sand as a filtering medium – promising a safe, dewatered facility with the possibility of re-purposing otherwise sterilised land within months of closure. Through effective and permanent desaturation of the tailings, the geotechnical safety of the facility can be enhanced and deliver stability in excess of new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (GISTM) standards.
Anglo American has embarked on an ambitious demonstration of this technology, having built a bespoke 250,000 cu.m capacity HDS tailings facility at its El Soldado copper mine in Chile. The sand transportation and placement system was commissioned in August and tailings placement commenced at the start of November.
Data is being collected in real time on water balance, moisture content and consolidation, according to Newman, who said, by the end of the year, the company will be able to understand the degree to which tailings consolidation and dewatering is accelerated through the adoption of HDS.
“Our early results are already promising,” he said. “We have already measured water recovery at more than 80% (our initial target), and dewatering is continuing with up to 85% water recovery a possibility.”
The trial will continue over the coming months with the second layer of the main sand berm being installed this month, followed by further tailings deposition.
Beyond the financial and environmental benefits, there is significant potential for the mining industry to leverage HDS to shift public perception on mining waste, according to Newman.
“Anglo American is keen to partner with other mining companies to accelerate the development and learning of this new technology and is open to synergistic licensing opportunities,” he added.
“We believe HDS could demonstrate that tailings can move from a risk which needs to be managed, to a safe, water-generating asset that, on completion, can deliver value-generating land to the perpetual benefit of our communities. By ushering in a new era of tailings disposal we are demonstrating how we are re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.”
Capstone Mining has brought a second Caterpillar 994K wheel loader to its Pinto Valley operation in Arizona, USA, as it looks to reduce its emissions and improve its operating cost base at the copper mine.
Last year, the mine added to its fleet a Cat 994K loader, which, the company says, burns circa-30 less gallons of fuel per hour (1.9 litres/min) than its current shovels. “This reduced our CO2 emissions and operational cost savings on approximately 116,000 gallons of fuel in 2020,” Capstone said.
The second 994K, added last week, will, in partnership with the first wheel loader, displace around 10,000 shovel hours a year and save approximately 410,000 gallons of fuel and millions in maintenance costs, the company claimed.
Capstone concluded: “Pinto Valley is innovating and optimising for exciting times ahead.”
This is not the only area of innovation the company is currently pursuing at Pinto Valley, an operation it acquired from BHP back in in October 2013.
In its 2020 results, released last month, Capstone said the implementation of phase one of its PV3 Optimization project at Pinto Valley had delivered a 10% sustainable throughput improvement compared with 2019.
The PV3 Optimization project has been designed to achieve safer, more reliable and higher capacity operations without major investments in new comminution equipment. It is doing this by leveraging new inexpensive technologies.
Phase one work, which included improved blast fragmentation processes, installation of a new secondary crusher and screen decks as well as a new mill shell, was completed last year. This saw the mine achieve throughput of 57,168 t/d in the December quarter, 10% higher than the annual 2019 average of 51,137 t/d. December 2020 mill throughput achieved 60,717 t/d, which represents a new monthly record in the mine’s operating history.
Phase two of the PV3 Optimization project is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021, upon completion of upgrades to a conveyor, mill auto controls, cyclone packs and retrofits to the thickeners, it said.
During the month of December, the company conducted a pilot plant test of Eriez HydroFloat coarse particle technology at Pinto Valley, with Capstone saying the results had surpassed expectations of a 6% improvement target to overall copper recovery. In fact, the tests showed a 6-8% increase in overall copper recovery was achievable, which, when combined with expected higher throughput rates, could result in an additional 9-12 MIb/y (4,082-5,443 t/y) of copper production at the operation, it said.
“Additional benefits to the technology include allowing the operation increased throughput by operating at a coarser grind size, which is expected to lower power costs, improve water consumption and lead to improved stability in the tailings storage facility,” Capstone said in its 2020 results. “The estimated $70 million expansionary capital, which includes the installation of Eriez HydroFloat and related equipment, if approved by the board of directors, is expected to be spread over half two 2021 and early 2022, with start-up expected in Q2 (June quarter) 2022.”
Capstone said it expects to release an updated NI 43-101 technical report that encompasses the PV3 Optimization Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects and improvements in the second half of 2021.
At the same time, it is also looking into a PV4 study at Pinto Valley.
Capstone explained: “Feasibility work on scenarios to take advantage of approximately one billion tonnes of mineral resource not currently in the mineral reserve mine plan, which is at similar grade to the current mineral reserves, will be conducted for Pinto Valley.”
The PV4 study is expected to be released in late 2022 and will contemplate using existing mill infrastructure rather than building new facilities, with higher mining rates, higher cutoff grades to the mill and increased tonnage available for leaching.
Extensive column leach test work in collaboration with Jetti Resources LLC will take place over 2021. Jetti’s patented catalytic technology, designed to allow for the efficient and effective heap and stockpile leach extraction of copper, has been a success at Pinto Valley’s leaching operation, where it expects to recover up to 350 million pounds of cathode copper over the next two decades from historic and new mineralised waste piles.
“Capstone is a pioneer in the application of this leach technology and we intend to use it to enhance the economics of a future expansion at Pinto Valley,” it said.
Anglo American has approved the construction of a coarse particle recovery (CPR) plant at its in-development Quellaveco copper project in Peru.
The announcement came within the company’s 2020 financial results, which showed Anglo generated underlying EBITDA of $9.8 billion and a profit attributable to equity shareholders of $2.1 billion for the year.
CPR, Anglo says, is one of many significant breakthrough technology initiatives that has the potential to increase throughput and productivity, while simultaneously reducing environmental footprint, through rejection of coarse gangue (near-worthless waste material), dry stacking of sand waste, minimising the production of traditional tailings and reducing overall water consumption.
The CPR plant signoff at Quellaveco follows a full-scale demo plant installation at the company’s El Soldado mine in Chile – which is ramping up to full capacity by mid-2021 – and the decision to construct a full-scale system at the Mogalakwena North PGM concentrator in South Africa.
Anglo said of the Quellaveco CPR plant: “This breakthrough technology will initially allow retreatment of coarse particles from flotation tailings to improve recoveries by circa-3% on average over the life of the mine. This investment will also enable future throughput expansion which will bring a reduction in energy and water consumption per unit of production.”
The capital expenditure of the CPR project is around $130 million, with commissioning of the new plant expected in 2022. DRA Global previously carried out a feasibility study for the CPR plant at Quellaveco.
In terms of Quellaveco project progress, Anglo said today that, despite the COVID-19-related slowdown, first production was still expected in 2022. This was, in part, due to the excellent progress achieved prior to the national lockdown, and based on optimised construction and commissioning plans, Anglo said.
Key activities in 2021 include the start of pre-stripping, which will see the first greenfield use of automated hauling technology in Peru; progressing construction of the primary crusher and ore transport conveyor tunnel to the plant; completion of the 95 km freshwater pipeline that will deliver water from the water source area to the Quellaveco site; completing installation of the shells and motors for both milling lines; and completion of the tailings starter dam.
The mine, owned 60% by Anglo and 40% by Mitsubishi Corp, comes with a production blueprint of 300,000 t/y over the first 10 years of the mine.
Researchers from The University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) have signed an agreement with industry partners to form a consortium to develop improved energy efficiency for mineral processing operations.
The Collaborative Consortium for Coarse Particle Processing Research will run initially for five years and tackle multidisciplinary aspects of coarse particle processing such as flotation, comminution, classification, and equipment design and process chemistry, SMI says.
It will also contribute towards global challenges such as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation of human-made climate change.
The processing of coarse particles is considered one of the key research areas for developing improved energy efficiency of mineral processing operations, according to SMI.
The consortium includes researchers from SMI’s Julius Kruttschnitt Minerals Research Centre (JKMRC) and representatives from Anglo American, Aeris Resources, Eriez Flotation Division, Glencore, Hudbay Minerals, Newcrest Mining and Newmont.
The program Chair is SMI Director, Professor Neville Plint (far left). JKMRC’s Associate Professor, Kym Runge (right), and Dr Liza Forbes (middle) are the Technical Directors.
Professor Plint said SMI and JKMRC have a long history of successful industry engagement.
“This consortium brings together depth and breadth of expertise and significant technical skill, and it shows the willingness of industry to work closely with university researchers to tackle complex problems and have an impact,” he said.
“The team in JKMRC have worked hard and consulted with all our industry partners to create this important forum.”
Newmont’s Director of Processing, Dr Ronel Kappes, said the company had identified coarse particle recovery (CPR) as a key enabling technology to focus on, in order to improve future processing efficiencies.
“The UQ CPR Consortium project is an important step in technology development in order to leverage future CPR applications,” Dr Kappes said.
Eriez Flotation Division’s, Dr Eric Wasmund, said the company was pleased to be a founding sponsor of the consortium.
“This consortium fits EFD’s vision to enable sustainable technology solutions through strong customer partnerships,” he said. “As demonstrated by our leading-edge HydroFloat® technology, coarse particle flotation is a key disruptive technology for improving mineral recoveries, reducing power and water consumption and producing safer tailings.”
The CPR Consortium held its first technical workshop at the end of September.
Anglo American Platinum, in its June quarter results presentation, has provided further detail on a range of initiatives it is working on as part of its “P101” and FutureSmart™ initiatives.
The company has been pursuing these developments to “drive improvement in operational performance from current levels”. The P100 benchmark represents “best in class in the industry”, while P101 represents operating assets and equipment at levels beyond what is currently thought to be possible in the industry.
Amplats has previously mentioned several technologies it is working on as part of its FutureSmart development, including “coarse particle flotation, which can reduce energy intensity by over 30%; advanced fragmentation and shock-break technology at concentrators, which has the potential to also reduce energy intensity by 30%; and fine recovery of chrome and PGMs, in conjunction with bulk sorting, which can lead to a 10% increase in feed grade and recoveries”.
In the June quarter results presentation, the company said it had made some headway on many of these.
In terms of bulk sorting technologies, which majority-owner Anglo American has been using in trials at the El Soldado copper mine, in Chile, Amplats said technology evaluation was progressing at its Mogalakwena PGM mine, in South Africa.
With the shock-break technology, Amplats said it had an “evaluation unit” installed at its Baobab concentrator, also in South Africa. Amplats has access to this concentrator through an agreement it signed with Lonmin (now part of Sibanye-Stillwater) a few years ago, with the company, previously saying use of the concentrator would allow it to process excess ore and unlock value at Mogalakwena (dispatch control room pictured).
The shock-break technology Amplats refers to uses VeRo Liberator® technology from PMS GmbH. Gregor Borg from PMS told attendees at MEI’s Physical Separation conference in Falmouth, UK, in June, that on an industrial scale, Amplats had already applied two customised VeRo Liberators at its South Africa platinum operations and had ordered a third which is due to be shipped. All three were specially designed to be used in industrial‐scale pilot tests at the miners’ operations, he said.
Coming back to P101, Amplats said its Shovel Performance project was in progress at Mogalakwena. This is seeking to increase the rope shovel performance at the mine from 26 Mt/y to over 45 Mt/y.
The coarse particle recovery technology – a core part of the company’s plan to ultimately eliminate tailings dams, according to Anglo American Technical Director, Tony O’Neill – is set for trials at Amplats’ operations in 2020, the company said.
At the same time as this, there was a fine particle recovery concept study in progress, as well as a prefeasibility study on fine chrome recovery, Amplats said.
“It’s clear that the pressures on us are unsustainable, whether it is around our carbon footprint, water footprint, or physical footprint, and we are always looking for different ways to push us in this future direction where our footprint will be very different.”
Tony O’Neill, Anglo American Technical Director, knows the company he works for is up against it when it comes to retaining its reputation as one of the world’s leading sustainable mining companies.
It’s clear from the company’s 2018 sustainability report – which saw it achieve a best-ever performance in terms of injuries, a cut in energy use and an increase in greenhouse gas emission savings – that Anglo is going down multiple paths to reach its goals. O’Neill, who joined the company almost six years ago, believes Anglo’s FutureSmart Mining™ programme will play a major role in confronting and overcoming many of the issues it (and the industry) is facing.
“If you look at FutureSmart Mining, at its absolute essence, it is about footprint; how do you change the footprint of mining? How do you have a mine that draws no fresh water? Mines without tailings dams? Mines that look very different?” he told IM.
“It’s getting people to believe there is a different way for mining in an industry that has, to this point, been quite traditional. It is not going to happen overnight, but I think we have a genuine vision that is, in my view, quite feasible.”
IM spoke with O’Neill and Donovan Waller, Group Head of Technology Development, this week to get to the bottom of how technology is making Anglo ever more sustainable.
IM: Could you explain how the Anglo operating model facilitates and fosters innovation within the context of FutureSmart Mining?
TO: The Anglo American operating model is the chassis that underpins everything, giving us certainty in the delivery of our work. When you have got that stability – and the lack of variability – in your business outputs, it is much easier to overlay new technologies and processes. When you then see a difference in operating or financial results, you can confirm it is down to what you have implemented, rather than the underlying processes.
I look at it a little bit like a three-legged stool: you have the operating model on one leg, the P101 benchmark-setting on another, and technology and data analytics on the third leg. They all co-exist in this system and work off each other. Without one, the stool falls over.
The operating model has given us a drumbeat of delivery, and we get the licence to innovate because of this drumbeat.
IM: Do you think FutureSmart Mining is starting to be understood and valued by investors?
TO: They’re awake to it now. I think it is still in the early stages of the story, but they can see what we are doing and the ambition behind it. Ultimately, it will result in a different investment profile, or more investors because of it, but I am not sure that it’s translated in full up to now. The recognition has been more around the general results of the company.
With all these technologies coming through – much of them driven by higher levels of data and the ability to interrogate that data – the vision we imagined way out into the future, I think, is a lot more tangible than when we started out four years ago.
IM: Out of all the tailings dam elimination work you are carrying out (around passive resistivity, fibre-optics, micro-seismic monitoring, coarse particle recovery, polymers, and dry stacking), which innovation will have an impact on Anglo’s operations in the next three-to-five years?
TO: All of them. We started out with our tailings programme in 2013; in fact, our group technical standards were re-issued at the beginning of 2014 and they are now one of the main guidelines the ICMM (International Council on Mining and Metals) uses.
Tailings dams have always been at the back end of the mining process and, in a way, the science behind them has never been part of the mainstream operation. Our view, internally for many years, is tailings dams are one of the industry’s greatest risks.
Ultimately our aim is to eliminate tailings dams. Period. Coarse particle flotation – getting that coarser particle size that drains much more freely – is core to that and you can see a development pathway there. For example, with some of these new flotation techniques, we now only need 1% exposure of the mineral for it to be effective. In the past, it was much higher.
When we upgraded the capability of our tailings organisation, it became clear we needed to get a lot more data off these tailings dams. About three years ago, we started putting fibre-optic sensors into the dams. We have since developed, through our exploration arm, passive resistivity seismic monitoring, which basically tells you where your water sits in the dams. And, we’re putting into Quellaveco micro-seismic measuring techniques, which will be more granular again. You can see the day coming really quickly where tailings dams are a real-time data source for mining companies.
We’re also, with our joint venture partner Debswana, building the first polymer plant in Botswana, which could have an impact on dry tailing disposal.
The thing we need to crack – both ourselves and the industry – is how to dry stack at scale. At the moment, that is still a work-in-progress, but it is doable in the long term.
IM: How is the bulk sorter you have operating at El Soldado, which is equipped with a neutron sensor, working? How has it made a difference to recoveries and grades at the operation?
TO: With the bulk sorter, we’re taking packages of tonnes rather than individual rocks to enable us to get both speed and volume. At El Soldado, we are sorting in four tonne packages. You can adapt the sorting profile by the characteristics of the orebody. We’re generally looking to sort tonnages that are less than you would put in a haul truck body or bucket.
If you step right back, in the past, most processing plants wanted to blend to get an average feed. We are going the other way. We want to use the heterogeneity of the orebody to its advantage; the less mixing we can get ahead of these sorting processes, the better it is for recoveries.
Being able to remove an orebody above the cut-off grade alongside waste tonnages and upgrade the latter has led to an effective lift in head grade. It has been enabled by new sensing technology with a particular type of neutron sensor.
What we have seen in early results has surprised us on the upside. We thought we would see a 5% uplift in head grade, but in fact we have seen about 20% – to qualify that, it’s in its early stages.
If you take this to its logical conclusion, you can see the day coming where you would cut the rock – no drilling and blasting – immediately sort the rock behind the machine cutting it and distribute said rock efficiently into its value in use; you don’t have stockpiles, you have plants sensing the material right through and adapting in real time to the change in mineralogy. I think there is another 3-4% increase in recovery in that whole process when we get it right.
Our sweet spot when we created FutureSmart Mining was always the orebody and processing plants, more so than automation (although that is part of the potential mix). That was different to a lot of the other players in the industry. This focus could lead to the development of different types of plants; ones that are flexible, more modular and you can plug and play.
IM: Do you see these type of neutron sensors being applied elsewhere across a mine site?
TO: Yes, through processing plants and conveyors. In fact, we’re preparing for this on conveyors right now.
What we have found with all this new technology is that, when we implement it, quite often another opportunity arrives. They end up playing off each other, and that is the context for the bulk sorting and coarse particle flotation.
IM: How have Anglo’s Open Forums played into these developments?
TO: We have held eight Open Forums on sustainability, processing, mining, exploration (two), future of work, energy and maintenance.
Out of those eight, I think we have got around 10,000 ideas from them. These forums have been specifically designed where only about a third of participants are from the mining industry, with the other two thirds coming from the best and brightest analogous industries we can tap into – automobile, oil & gas, food, construction, even Formula 1 racing and NASA.
The reality is that out of those 10,000 ideas, the success rate is about 1:1,000, but the one that makes it is quite often a game changer.
IM: Going back to the bulk sorters, am I right in thinking you plan to put these into Mogalakwena and Barro Alto too?
TO: The aim is to have them across our business. At El Soldado, the copper angle is very important. The technology – the sensing and using the data – is probably a touch more advanced in copper, but we are building one currently in our PGMs business at Mogalakwena and a bit behind that, but ready to be built, is one in nickel, yes.
In terms of our programme, you will see them spread across our business in the next, hopefully, 18 months.
IM: Where does your approach to advanced process control (APC) fit into the FutureSmart Mining platform?
TO: We want to have APC in some form across all our business by the end of this year. We have probably come from a little behind some of the other players in the industry, but we’re pushing it quite aggressively to give us the platform for data analytics. The upside we have seen just by putting the process control in so far has surprised me a bit – in a good way; power reductions, throughput, having this different level of control. All of it has been pleasing.
We spent about 12 months looking at the whole data analytics space to see how we were going to implement our solution. If you look around at the sector, everyone wants to be involved and profit share. If you add it all up, you could end up with not a lot of profitable pieces at the end. We have strategically chosen the pieces we think are important to us and our profit pool and have been happy to be a little looser on some of the non-core areas.
The other key plank to the APC is that we own the data. The reality is, in the new world, data is like a new orebody and we’re not willing to let go of that.
IM: Your Smart Energy project involving a haul truck powered on hydrogen has certainly caught the attention of the market: how did you come up with this innovation?
TO: Initially, we couldn’t make renewables work from an investment criteria perspective – it was always close, but never quite there. Donovan’s team then took an approach where they said, ‘forget the normal investment criteria. All we want to do is, make the business case wash its face.’ In doing so, it enabled them to oversize a renewable or photovoltaic energy source – the power plant – using that extra power to produce hydrogen and putting that hydrogen to use in the haulage fleet. Re-engineering the haulage fleet gave us the business outcomes we were looking for.
DW: These business cases bring you to temporary barriers. When you hit that temporary barrier, people normally stop, but what we said was, ‘OK, just assume it is not there and go forward.’ That brought the whole business case back again by looking at it differently again.
IM: Where is this project likely to be situated within the group?
TO: We’re still not 100% fixed as the initial work will be done here (the UK). You are talking about quite specialist skills working with hydrogen.
When the system has gone past its initial testing, it will go to a site, probably in South Africa, but we are not 100% locked into that at this point.
IM: On the 12-month timeline you have given, when would you have to be on site?
TO: The infrastructure will be pre-built here in the UK. We’re effectively testing it here. In a way, the physical truck is the easy bit.
It’s going to be using a 300-t class truck. The guys have already done quite a bit of the detailed measuring and the design elements are well under way.
We’ve also taken the approach to use pre-approved technology, which Donovan can talk about.
DW: This minimises the risk on the first go and allows us to, later, tailor it. For example, if you don’t have a right sized fuel cell currently available off-the-shelf, you just use multiple standard-size fuel cells for now. Then, when you get into the final version you could tailor them into something more specific.
IM: On mechanised cutting, you recently mentioned the building of a “production-sized machine” for at least one of your mines in South Africa. Is this a variant of the Epiroc machine – the Rapid Mine Development System – you have been using at Twickenham?
TO: It’s the next generation of machines. It’s fair to say that, in the last 12 months, the technology has come to the point where we are confident it is viable.
What we’re looking for is a fundamental breakthrough where, for example, we can take the development rates up three or four times from what you would usually expect. That is what we’re chasing. It would involve some sort of pre-conditioning of the rock ahead of the cutting, but the cutting, itself, works.
For us, mechanised cutting is a real solution to some of the safety issues we have had on our plate. Regardless of whether it goes into South Africa or another underground mine, we see it as a key part of our future underground design and operation.
IM: What type of rock pre-conditioning is this likely to be?
TO: I think around the world, people are looking at electricity, microwave, laser, a whole suite of things. None of them have yet quite landed, but they all have potential.
IM: Where does haul truck automation fit into the pipeline for Anglo American?
TO: All the equipment we buy, going forward, will be autonomous-capable, which means we can run it in either format (manned or unmanned). You are then left with a number of decisions – have you got the design to retrofit automation? Is there a safety issue to be considered? Is there a weather issue to contend with? There are a whole series of gates that we’ll take it (automation projects) through.
It’s good to go back to P101 here. Where P100 is getting all of our key processes to world-class benchmarks, P101 is about establishing a new benchmark. By definition, if you get your operations to that point, the gap between that manned performance and autonomous performance is not that great.
Autonomy is part of our future armoury, but when and where and how, we’ll have to wait and see. For example, we are currently looking at the option of autonomous haulage trucks at one of our open-cut mines in Queensland.
When you look at our portfolio of operations, it’s often a more complex environment than when you are just working in the wide open Pilbara.
