Australia-headquartered Global Road Technology (GRT) says it is continuing to support health and safety in the mining sector through ensuring supplies of its dust suppression materials remain uninterrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As awareness grows of the risks of airborne disease due to dust pollution, Australian state governments in the past 18 months have strengthened legislation to ensure resource companies are applying best-practice methods to ensure the safety of workers and downstream communities.

GRT, despite the global lockdown designed to suppress the spread of COVID-19, is able to continue to assist its remote clients in implementing dust mitigation strategies due to the fact its manufacturing supply chain is highly localised within Australia, enabling it to continue client deliveries while implementing remote support strategies, it said.

Managing Director of GRT, Troy Adams, said the firm is extremely well placed to meet the huge demand across the Australia mining sector to support their requirements during this turbulent time, with a focus on ensuring minimal disruption to their operations.

“Our firm’s products, applications and services are nearly all developed within Australia meaning that we can meet the immediate demand from the resource sector in a fast and cost-effective manner – achieving our core goal of operational and project efficiency, which is now more important than ever,” Adams said.

“Right now, the global supply chain, particularly in an area such as ours requiring advanced manufacturing to produce our products, has been severely impacted and there is a legislative requirement from most of the various state governments across Australia to ensure that dust suppression strategies are implemented across all mining sites. Our core focus, while ensuring the safety of employees, has been to meet our customers’ supply needs to ensure minimal disruptions to production to such a vitally important sector of the country’s economy.”

GRT has developed infrastructure and process solutions for the mining, civil and agricultural sectors that minimise safety issues and the environmental impact of road building, and can be applied across various soil types.

GRT has developed a range of innovative chemical additives – GRT: Haul-Loc, GRT: Activate, GRT: Ore-Loc, and GRT: Wet-Loc – designed specifically for managing and containing dust to protect workers on mine sites and nearby residents and landholders from airborne dust pollution and disease.

“For countries with largely resource-based economies like Australia, these solutions are in high-demand, as it allows clients to operate more efficiently whilst protecting staff, communities and the local environment,” the company said.

GRT General Manager, Daniel Grundy, believes the current disruption has highlighted the firm’s agility and strong supply chain management practices.

“Although our travel to mine sites has been restricted due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve implemented a number of strategies to support our clients,” Grundy said.

“Innovations like automated dosing units, practices like bulk supply and storage option, in addition to a focus on ensuring reliable on-site pump technologies, are being combined to ensure that our dust mitigation and erosion control strategies remain uninterrupted,” he said. “All of these practices are playing a key role in reducing air pollution and saving water in relatively dry regions of Australia where much of this activity occurs.”