ZYFRA Group has opened an arm of its subsidiary, VIST, in Lima, Peru, as it looks to expand its digital mining offering into South America and the continent’s massive copper industry.

The announcement comes as Igor Bogachev, CEO of ZYFRA, and Mikhail Makeev, Project Director of VIST, start a two-week tour of Chile and Peru taking in visits to numerous mining companies.

ZYFRA has, up until this point, been supplying industrial manufacturers in Europe and Asia with AI- and IoT- based solutions as well as autonomous vehicles. At the end of last year, it reached a milestone of $30 million in revenue, while announcing plans to enter the markets of Latin America as early as 2019.

Mario Rabines, VIST Business Development Director for LatAm, said: “The heart and soul of the world’s copper extraction, Chile and Peru, are being shaken by the latest technology developments. Within the region, the IT and operations departments are ready to change the status quo of the industry. The value proposition of our ZYFRA and VIST solutions will increase the levels of productivity and safety to record levels not seen in the region yet.”

Currently the most advanced miners in South America are performing a number of processes involving cutting-edge technology, such as drilling and transportation of raw materials with the use of robotics, according to ZYFRA Group. In 2019, the majority of industry players may start using new technologies on an industrial scale, the company added.

On top of international expansion, ZYFRA is eager to complete its ‘Intelligent mine’ project – a complex solution for unmanned surface mining with application of self-driving vehicles, it said. VIST is planning to spend a material share of investment provided by ZYFRA to accelerate its R&D projects including self-driving vehicles, autonomous surface mining machines (robots) and appliances, broader IoT- and AI-based applications as well as predictive analytics.

ZYFRA and VIST have developed an autonomous system for drills and autonomous and tele-operated system for mining vehicles as well as self-driving trucks and loaders. These are currently being demonstrated on BELAZ’s earthmoving equipment.

ZYFRA and VIST say autonomous drilling can bring a 16% productivity increase, while autonomous guidance from hole to hole (based on the electronic design imported from a planning system) can come with an 18% productivity increase.

ZYFRA, founded in November 2017, currently operates in Finland, China, Russia, Bulgaria, and India. Its platform connects over 7,000 CNC machines across the countries. At the end of 2018, more than 200 production facilities have been equipped with its products.

The company acquired VIST in November 2018 for $30 million.