Tag Archives: WebGen

Orica releases BlastIQ Underground to improve blasting performance

Orica has announced the release of its latest BlastIQ™ Underground technology, which, it says, improves underground blasting performance with integrated digital solutions.

Developed by Orica Digital Solutions, BlastIQ Underground provides quality control and improved drill and blast productivity for superior blast outcomes, the company says. Enabling underground operations to efficiently manage their blasting process, from planning to post-blast analysis, with user-friendly reporting, analytics, and information management.

The suite of technologies improves blast productivity with the digital communication of blast designs, including the re-application of charging designs in response to hole locations. The digital collection and management of drilling data empower engineers to identify opportunities for continuous improvement of drilling and charging operations, the company says.

Orica Vice President Digital Solutions, Rajkumar Mathiravedu, said: “Orica is continually growing its digital offerings for customers to align with the swift digital transformation across the industry.

“Our software ensures that every blast is executed precisely, and the desired outcomes are achieved. This level of accuracy translates into significant cost savings and improved resource utilisation for our customers. To better cater to our customers, we are amassing a digital technology portfolio that complements our core blasting technologies such as 4D Underground, WebGen and Avatel.”

BlastIQ Underground enables customers to streamline their workflows, reduce operational costs and gain a competitive edge in the market, according to Orica.

Mathiravedu concluded: “We are shaping the future of underground mining and our digital solutions are a testament to our ongoing commitment to innovation, safety, productivity and sustainability.”

BlastIQ Underground can also help reduce the environmental footprint of mining operations, according to Orica. The software’s precision drilling and blasting capabilities minimises ground vibrations, air overpressure and environmental impact of blasting activities.

Orica announces commercial launch of wireless blast initiation solution, WebGen 200 Surface

Orica has announced the commercial release of WebGen™ 200 Surface, its latest wireless blast initiation solution tailored to surface mining applications.

Developed based on the success of more than 5,000 WebGen 100 blasts around the world, containing over 150,000 primers, WebGen 200 Surface will change how the industry blasts, resulting in more safer and efficient blasting for customers, according to the company.

The company conducted the first surface blast with WebGen 200 at TerraCom’s Blair Athol coal mine in Queensland, Australia, at the back end of 2022, as part of its Alpha trial program to verifiy and validate product testing in the field. Another trial at a partner customer mine in northern Chile has since followed.

Specifically designed for surface mining applications, WebGen 200 Surface eliminates physical wired connections to a blast or within the blasthole, opening up a whole new range of possibilities, Orica says. It enables customers to optimise their entire mining process from reducing exposure on bench to geological hazards, such as stemming dust, working next to highwalls, reducing vehicle interactions, and removing people from harm’s way.

The WebGen 200 system revolutionises mining operations by enabling customers to carry out operations during the lightning storm season or turning a loaded blast into a temporary haul road with the award-winning blasting method Mine Schedule Flexibility, the company said.

Orica Senior Manager, WebGen Commercialisation, Rhys Patterson, said: “It is the culmination of years of research and development across technology, marketing, commercial, supply and manufacturing teams. We are pleased to announce that WebGen 200 Surface is now commercially available for our customers.”

In addition, the safe passage of mining equipment over loaded blastholes by maintaining parallel mining, and drilling, and loading activities is now a reality, which can significantly increase the vertical advance of surface mines, Orica says. Production delays associated with exclusion zones around loaded blast patterns during lightning storms can also be eliminated using WebGen.

Orica’s global underground customers started the transition to WebGen 200 Underground Pro, with Newmont Borden being the first underground customer reaping the benefits of adopting this technology in late 2022. Engineered to deliver robust safety and reliability, the four variants of WebGen 200 (WebGen 200 Surface, WebGen 200 Surface Pro, WebGen 200 Underground Pro and WebGen 200 Dev) have been built with enhanced capabilities, security, and versatility, ensuring it meets the extreme mining conditions faced by surface and underground customers.

Orica, Epiroc and Agnico Eagle carry out world-first development charging milestone at Kittilä

Orica and Epiroc, in partnership with Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, have successfully commenced live blasting with Avatel™ – the world’s first semi-automated wireless underground development charging solution at Agnico Eagle’s Kittilä mine in Finland.

The milestone brings to life an industry-driven concept that dramatically improves safety at the face, which is one of the highest risk activities in underground mining today, Orica and Epiroc say.

Avatel enables a single operator to prepare and wirelessly complete a full charging cycle from the safety of an enclosed cabin while offering the best available blast outcomes through the integration of Orica and Epiroc’s flagship digital, automation and blasting technologies.

The first successful blast was loaded and fired on November 22, 2022, comprising 61 Orica WebGen™ 200 Dev wireless primers and 295 kilograms of Orica’s Subtek™ bulk emulsion loaded to a development face at the Kittilä mine.

Orica Chief Technology Officer, Angus Melbourne, said: “Together with Epiroc and Agnico Eagle we are extremely proud of the team in creating a solution that keeps people out of harm’s way during what is considered one of the highest risk activities for underground miners around the globe.

“With Avatel, we can now effectively manage risk for the people who spend the most time every shift directly exposed to hazards at the development face while delivering all of the blast optimisation benefits that Orica’s flagship technologies bring. The combination of digital, automation and wireless blasting technologies and by partnering with customers and peers, we can continue to solve the industry’s biggest challenges across safety, productivity and sustainability, together.”

Sami Niiranen, President for Epiroc’s Underground division, said: “This is a true milestone achieved for our industry where Epiroc in partnership with Orica have led the way to safer underground operation. By building on our recognised solutions and advanced Rig Control System, Avatel paves the way to safe productivity for the mining industry.”

Jari Näsi, Development Manager – Kittilä Mine, Agnico Eagle, said: “We are proud to create history here at Kittilä where the first mechanised and wireless development blast was initiated. There is always some risk when working close to the face; being able to do this work safely and efficiently from the cabin is promising, and mechanising the process will give a better blasting result.”

The first commercial implementation of Avatel will take place at Newcrest’s Cadia Valley Operations from December 2022.

Orica conducts first surface blast with WebGen 200 at Blair Athol mine

Orica says it has hit another milestone in its “Alpha” trials for the wireless WebGen™ 200 solution, with the first surface mining blast conducted at TerraCom’s Blair Athol coal mine in Queensland, Australia.

Orica’s WebGen team recently successfully loaded and fired the first open-pit coal blast with the through-the-earth, fully wireless initiating system at the operation.

WebGen technology provides for groups of in-hole primers to be wirelessly initiated by a firing command that communicates through hundreds of metres of rock, water, and air. This completely removes constraints often imposed by the requirement of a physical connection to each primer in a blast and importantly allows us to remove people from harm’s way, according to Orica.

Engineered to deliver robust safety and reliability, WebGen 200 has been built with enhanced capabilities, security and versatility, ensuring it meets the extreme mining conditions faced by surface and underground customers. It harnesses digital technology to allow advanced features including digital inventory management, an improved user interface and increased quality assurance.

The Alpha trial program is a comprehensive verification process and validation product testing in the field. Orica has hit some successful milestones recently with Alpha trials for its WebGen 200 Surface primer in the US, Chile and now in Australia with Blair Athol being the first coal mine globally to trial the new generation technology.

Orica Senior Manager WebGen Commercialisation, Rhys Patterson, said: “We’re excited about what the future holds for the industry with WebGen 200 as we progress towards commercial release of WebGen 200 Surface, which is expected in early 2023. The success of the program would not be possible without the trust and willingness of our valued customers to partner with us.”

Commenting on this trial, TerraCom Managing Director, Danny McCarthy, said: “TerraCom is pleased to be at the forefront of this technology with our valued partner Orica. We welcome innovative ways and techniques to make our workplaces safer and, of course, more productive.

“We appreciate the efforts of everyone involved from our team on the ground at Blair Athol to everyone at Orica for their commitment to a safe and successful trial.”

Orica closed out Alpha trials of its second generation fully wireless initiating system for the underground market in September. Orica’s underground customers around the world have started to transition to the WebGen 200 Underground Pro, with customers reaping the benefits of adopting this technology, according to the company.

Orica unveiled a WebGen 200 product range that included the WebGen 200 Surface, WebGen 200 Surface Pro, WebGen 200 Underground Pro and WebGen 200 Dev at MINExpo 2021 in Las Vegas, in September last year.

Since then, it has initiated trials at the Moose Creek Quarry in Canada, where the team on site loaded and fired the first production blast for WebGen 200 on a customer site, successfully blasting 130 units.

A WebGen 200 wireless initiation system is also on board Avatel™, Orica and Epiroc’s jointly engineered fully mechanised development charging system. Avatel recently achieved a world first with the automated loading of its fully wireless initiating system into a blast hole.

Orica’s wireless blasting tech overcomes magnetite challenges at LKAB Kiruna

A four-year collaboration between Orica and LKAB has resulted in the first production blasts using wireless initiation technology at the Kiruna iron ore mine in northern Sweden.

These blasts – charged in the middle of May and blasted in early June – are going some way to support LKAB’s safety, productivity and long-term automation objectives, according to Abhisek Roy, EMEA Head of Marketing for Orica.

It has involved an extensive amount of work to get to this blasting milestone, according to Ingemar Haslinger, Technical Services Lead Europe at Orica.

He explained: “It all started in 2018 when LKAB showed interest in our new WebGen™ wireless technology. They could see the benefits in both safety and productivity with the new way of producing the ore.”

This saw Orica go to site at the Kiruna mine in March 2018 to begin with a signal survey, testing if the company could obtain a good signal between the antenna and the in-hole receivers.

WebGen provides for groups of in-hole primers to be wirelessly initiated by a firing command that communicates through rock, water and air. This removes constraints often imposed by the requirement of a physical connection to each primer in a blast. The wireless blasting system not only improves safety – by removing people from harm’s way – but improves productivity – by removing the constraints imposed by wired connections.

It is, therefore, considered, a critical pre-cursor to automating the charging process.

To this point, WebGen has fired over 100,000 units in over 3,000 blasts globally across customer sites, Orica says.

At Kiruna, however, the process from testing to technology on-boarding was less than straightforward.

“In the area of the mine where the signal survey was completed in 2018, it was discovered that the signal could not penetrate the magnetite ore at all,” Haslinger said. “This was the first time we had encountered this and was a setback for Orica and LKAB.”

At that time, Orica did not have the localised field equipment or advanced diagnostic tools to diagnose the antenna issue, making it difficult to ascertain the root cause.

“We had to go back to our global WebGen specialists and try to understand why this was happening, which we were successfully able to do,” Haslinger said.

After dedicated work from the global team, Orica went back to Kiruna in September 2020, looking to replicate the signal survey from 2018 and use its advanced diagnostic tools to measure the antenna performance and output.

“We also had the opportunity to test the signal behaviour in the holes, as well as measure the rock properties around the antenna and the in-hole receivers,” Haslinger added.

The survey proved successful, explaining why the signal could not go through the orebody. This allowed the global WebGen team to start developing solutions to overcome the signal problem, which it was able to do in short order.

In December 2020, the Orica team was back at the underground iron ore mine to test the new solution.

“The first trials with the new solution showed positive results and the global team continued to develop that further,” Haslinger said. “In May 2021, we tried the solution in many different conditions and applications to be sure that it would work in the mine. These trials gave us a lot more knowledge about the environment and how the new solution worked.

“In 2022, we were ready to test the system in active mine operations and it has been an extensive amount of work to get us to that point.”

Development of the WebGen wireless underground blasting technology is ongoing at the Kiruna mine

Michal Gryienko, Engineer at LKAB in Kiruna, said the first two production rings were charged using WebGen in the middle of May before blasting occurred in early June. This is one of the benefits of the system, with the wireless primers able to sit dormant in the blasting profile for around 30 days prior to blast initiation.

“The results look good so far,” Gryienko said. “In total, we will blast five production rings, and the final three are planned to be blasted in September.”

Among the benefits Gryienko highlighted were the reduction in risk associated with hole priming and the possibility of detonating more blast holes due to the ability overcome damaged or unstable blasting applications.

Orica’s Roy said the collaboration between the two companies has been “fantastic”.

“Despite the challenges around transmission of signal across the magnetite orebody that is a prerequisite for a successful wireless initiation, both companies have worked as partners for the last four years, finding practical and creative solutions,” he said.

“This hopefully is the start of a long-term sustainable wireless blasting solution that supports LKAB’s safety and productivity objectives and long-term automation goals.”

Orica’s WebGen wireless initiation system helps unlock reserves at BMTJV Renison tin mine

The Bluestone Mines Tasmania Joint venture (BMTJV) says it has become the first company in the Tasmania mining sector to demonstrate Orica’s fully wireless initiating system, WebGen™.

Since early 2021, BMTJV, the owner of the Renison tin mine, has been in consultation with Orica to implement the WebGen wireless blasting technology.

The first WebGen blast was successfully loaded in the Central Federal Basset (CFB_1458_5990_F4) section of the mine on June 13, 2022, with the first wireless blast in Tasmania successfully fired at BMTJV over the mine’s leaky feeder system on June 19.

Some 107 WebGen primers were loaded into BP4 (Block Panel 4) and “slept” for 14 days while BP3 was charged and fired, the company explained. Due to the geometry of the blast – and it being a high seismicity area – for B4 to be mined conventionally, a further 60 m of development would have been required to recover this ore.

The Orica WebGen system includes an i-kon™ plugin detonator, a Pentex™ W booster and a DRX™, which is a digital receiver comprising a multi-directional antenna and a battery that serves as the in-hole power source.

The Encoder Controller individually programs each wireless primer with its own unique encrypted codes. This encoder contributes to the inherent safety of the system, and programs each wireless primer with two codes, BMTJV explained. The first code is a unique group identity number for exclusive use at each mine and assigned to specified groups of primers which will sleep, wake and fire together. The second code is a ‘delay time’ specific to the wireless primer and blast design.

Mark Recklies, Chief Operating Officer – BMJTV, said: “WebGen has now been used to support continual safety improvements and deliver savings across the working mine.”

Orica’s hardware and software platforms converging for Mining 4.0

Orica’s corporate vision of “mobilising Earth’s resources in a sustainable way” is being further realised through a host of developments from its Digital Solutions and Blasting Technologies divisions, IM reports.

Those involved in charging operations could soon benefit from the launch of Orica and Epiroc’s Avatel™ solution, which, in combination with the WebGen™ wireless initiation platform, offers the ability to remotely blast a development face.

At the same time, the company is busy with the sustainable production of emulsion, the integration of geological orebody information to optimise energy use for blasting, and the expansion of downstream mineral processing tools.

Avatel

Avatel is a combination of state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions designed to mechanise the blasting process.

It includes Orica’s HandiLoader™ emulsion process body, Epiroc’s M2C carrier integrating an RCS 5 control system with Orica’s LOADPlus™ control system, a WebGen 200 wireless initiation system and an automated WebGen magazine. Epiroc has also incorporated onboard dewatering and lifter debris clearing capability, while Orica’s SHOTPlus™ intelligent blast design software is leveraged to deliver superior blasting outcomes, Orica says.

Orica and Epiroc’s advanced technologies integrated into the Avatel system

These components help eliminate the need for personnel exposure at the development face throughout the charging stage of the mining cycle, keeping personnel out of the line of fire, by substituting inherently high hazard manual tasks with a mechanised development charging solution.

A prototype Avatel unit is set to commence operations at Agnico Eagle Mining’s Kittilä gold mine in Finland in the next few months. This follows “alpha trialling” of the complete prototype unit at Epiroc’s Nacka test mine in Stockholm, Sweden.

Adam Mooney, Vice President of Blasting Technology for Orica, said: “Our goal for Kittilä is to expose Avatel to a real mining environment, putting the unit through its paces in an active mine where safety, productivity and reliability are core requirements for success.

“We will gain a practical understanding of how Avatel will fit in with and benefit the entire mining cycle, while also taking the opportunity to measure the blasting improvements possible through the combined use of electronic initiation timing and the precise blast energy control available with Avatel.”

A separate unit, meanwhile, will head to Newcrest Mining’s Cadia copper-gold mine in New South Wales, Australia, later this year, for the first commercial deployment. This is currently undergoing pre-delivery commissioning at Epiroc’s customer centre in Burnie, Tasmania.

Cyclo

Not too far away in Papua New Guinea, Orica has successfully commissioned a Cyclo™ emulsion technology unit, which has been running at a customer site for around two months, according to Mooney. The unit in question has treated in excess of 100,000 litres of used oil, he said.

Cyclo combines the company’s emulsion technology with used oil processing technology to transform mine-site used oil for application in explosives. To provide the tight quality control and regular testing required to manufacture emulsions with such inputs, Orica has partnered with CreatEnergy to develop a standalone, on-site solution to treat used oil.

Orica initially scheduled Cyclo for market introduction in late 2022, but it scaled and sped up development and production plans to support customers’ operations and curtail material disruptions brought about by COVID-19.

The first automated containerised used oil recycling system was commissioned in Ghana late in 2021, with the Papua New Guinea unit being the latest deployment.

Cyclo – containerised, automated used oil recycling service at a customer site in Ghana, Africa

A Senegal Cyclo debut is on track for July given the unit is already in country and connected into the emulsion plant on site, Mooney explained.

The company also plans to bring to market a Cyclo unit suitable for Arctic conditions by the end of this year, with the solution already under construction.

Data to insights to intelligence

Aside from hardware and sustainable emulsion solutions, Orica has recently signed an agreement with Microsoft Azure predicated on creating data-rich and artificial intelligence-infused tools that enable productivity, safety and sustainability benefits on site, with Raj Mathiravedu, Vice President of Digital Solutions, saying such a tie-up enables the company to think of the blasting value chain in a much more holistic manner.

“Orica Digital Solutions’ purpose is to develop and deliver a suite of integrated workflow tools to enable the corporate vision of mobilising Earth’s resources in a sustainable way,” he said. “A key attribute to delivering this workflow is the journey that we need to incorporate from data to insights to intelligence.”

Mathiravedu says the company is looking to go beyond the traditional solutions pairing software and IoT devices for a discrete product to – with the help of Microsoft Azure capabilities – building “answer products” focused on improving workflows.

“These workflows can benefit from understanding how geology within the orebody intelligence space can help us determine the optimised energy required for blasting in a real-time production workflow,” he said. “We have started this journey and are already delivering value to our customers by integrating workflows from orebody to processing.”

One example of this is the company’s FRAGTrack™ suite of solutions, devised to provide blast fragmentation data with auto-analysis capability.

Delivered as part of the company’s BlastIQ Digital Optimisation Platform, FRAGTrack is able to capture real-time fragmentation measurement data for optimising drill and blast operations, improving downstream productivity and tracking of operational performance.

Originally developed for measurements on both face shovels and conveyors, the solution was expanded earlier this year with the launch of FRAGTrack Crusher for automated pre-crusher fragmentation measurements.

FRAGTrack Crusher installation at Stevenson Aggregates

There are several vendors offering fragmentation measurement tools throughout the industry, but Mathiravedu says Orica’s solution can carry out such analysis consistently and accurately – day or night – in extremely dusty and dynamic environments like mining.

“The FRAGTrack image processing technology can handle extremely dusty and lighting-affected conditions beyond any solutions in the industry,” Mathiravedu said. “It is also able to learn and adapt to specific operational environments like the dumping habits of different truck operators using artificial intelligence technology. Together with the integration with fleet management systems, it can provide a fully autonomous and integrated measurement solution.”

On conveyors, the FRAGTrack solution can reliably measure fines with increased accuracy compared with conventional systems that leverage curve-fit algorithms, according to Mathiravedu, with the advanced image and 3D processing techniques providing the ability to measure fragments down to 5 mm in size.

The combination of FRAGTrack Conveyor and Orica’s ORETrack™ solution can provide not only particle size distribution information, but also critical information on ore grade and hardness for the milling operations in real time.

“The FRAGTrack platform architecture has been designed to be scalable to incorporate different sensor inputs along with its high-performance GPU compute capabilities,” Mathiravedu said, explaining that there could be further analysis solutions down the line.

Epiroc, Orica secure Newcrest Cadia trial for commercial Avatel charging system

Newcrest Mining is set to trial Avatel, a fully mechanised development charging system developed by Epiroc and Orica, at the Cadia operation in New South Wales, Australia, later this year, according to Tony Sprague.

Sprague, Group Manager, Directional Studies and Innovation at Newcrest, said this will be the first commercial trial of the Orica and Epiroc co-developed system anywhere in the world.

Orica and Epiroc, back in 2019, announced joint work on a semi-automated explosives delivery system, enabling safer and more productive blasting operations in underground mines. The companies said the partnership would “bring together the deep expertise and experience of two global industry leaders” to address the growing demand from customers mining in increasingly more hazardous and challenging underground operations.

Avatel includes Orica’s HandiLoader™ emulsion process body, Epiroc’s M2C carrier and RCS 5 control system, working with Orica’s LOADPlus™ control system and WebGen™ 200 wireless initiation system and automated WebGen magazine. Epiroc has also incorporated an onboard dewatering and lifter debris clearing system, while Orica’s ShotPlus™ intelligent blast design software is also being leveraged. These components help eliminate the need for traditional tie-ins and other physical wired connections from the charging cycle.

Orica has stated previously: “This first-of-its-kind innovation enables a single operator to prepare and charge explosives from the safety of an enclosed cabin, several metres from the face and out of harm’s way. Combined with Orica’s LOADPlus smart control system and Subtek Control bulk emulsion, customers can enjoy complete and repeatable control over blast energy from design through to execution.”

Trials with a prototype machine have been taking place at Epiroc’s Kvantorp Underground Test Mine in Sweden under controlled underground conditions. IM understands there are also plans for a machine to head to Agnico Eagle’s Kittilä Mine in Finland to complete extended underground trials in the production environment.

Newcrest’s Cadia operation is set to be the first site to trial the complete commercial offering at Cadia, commencing in the second half of 2022, according to Sprague.

Orica initiates WebGen 200 wireless blasting trial in Canada

As Orica progress towards the full commercial release of its WebGen™ 200 wireless blasting initiation platform, another milestone has been recently achieved at Moose Creek Quarry in Canada.

The team loaded and fired the first production blast for WebGen 200 on a customer site, successfully blasting 130 units.

This successful blast is a major milestone in the readiness of WebGen 200 for commercialisation, according to Orica, representing the culmination of years of research and development across technology, marketing, commercial, supply and manufacturing teams.

It comes two months after the company unveiled the product at MINExpo 2021 in Las Vegas, USA.

Global Head – New Technology Commercialisation, Nigel Pereira, said: “I want to thank all those involved in the successful trial and the team responsible for the development of our second-generation patented wireless initiating system, WebGen 200.

“This moves us one step closer to commercial release, and with over 70,000 WebGen 100 units fired across 2,500 blasts, both Orica and the industry are eager to see the program progress.”

Engineered to deliver market-leading safety and reliability, WebGen 200 has been built with enhanced capabilities, security and versatility, delivering safety and productivity gains for today’s applications and ensuring it meets the extreme mining conditions faced by surface and underground customers pushing the boundaries of mining’s next frontier, Orica said.

WebGen 200 will be available in four product variants and include a wider range of booster weights, opening up new segments, applications and opportunities in both surface and underground mining. The complete product range now includes the WebGen 200 Surface, WebGen 200 Surface Pro, WebGen 200 Underground Pro, and WebGen 200 Dev.

Orica to unveil WebGen 200 wireless blasting initiating system at MINExpo 2021

Orica says it will unveil its latest through-the-earth, fully wireless initiating system, WebGen™ 200 at MINExpo 2021 in Las Vegas next week.

A development based on more than 2,300 successful WebGen 100 blasts around the world, specifically in underground mines, Orica’s WebGen 200 technology has been designed with customers’ needs and feedback built-in as they look to further improve safety and productivity across their operations, the company says.

WebGen technology provides for groups of in-hole primers to be wirelessly initiated by a firing command that communicates through hundreds of metres of rock, water and air. This completely removes constraints often imposed by the requirement of a physical connection to each primer in a blast and importantly allows the removal of people from harm’s way, it says.

“Engineered to deliver market-leading safety and reliability, WebGen 200 has been built with enhanced capabilities, security and versatility, ensuring it meets the extreme mining conditions faced by surface and underground customers pushing the boundaries of mining’s next frontier,” Orica says.

MINExpo 2021 will take place on September 13-15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Orica Chief Technology Officer, Angus Melbourne said: “We know that as our customers go deeper and move into more complex mining, they are requiring more advanced technology to help them mine differently and continue to extract their orebodies safely and efficiently. That’s where WebGen 200 and our broader technology roadmap comes in.”

WebGen 200 harnesses digital technology to allow advanced features including digital inventory management, delay adjustments before blasting, an improved user interface and increased quality assurance, according to the company. Reliability is further improved with the WebGen 200 primers available to endure even greater dynamic pressure.

Orica Vice President – Blasting Technology, Adam Mooney, said: “We’ve co-developed our second-generation wireless initiation technology, WebGen 200, with customers from across all segments and regions around the world.

“We developed WebGen primarily to reduce or remove employees’ exposure to hazardous environments and improve overall operational safety. But we are also seeing the technology delivering unparalleled improvements in productivity and improved recovery for our customers – it is enabling a step-change in blasting and mining like no other.

“We are excited about what the future holds for the industry with WebGen 200 and know the enhancements made to this second-generation product will improve the customer experience, broaden its application and deliver significant value for customers while enabling the first stages of blast automation.”

The hardware, software and the WebGen 200 units come together as a system that, Orica says, is easily integrated into any operation. It will be available in four product variants and include a wider range of booster weights, opening up new segments, applications and opportunities in both surface and underground mining.

The complete product range now includes the WebGen 200 Surface, WebGen 200 Surface Pro, WebGen 200 Underground Pro, and WebGen 200 Dev. All four variants will be on show in Las Vegas.

The new WebGen 200 suite of fully wireless initiating systems

WebGen 200 Surface and WebGen 200 Surface Pro are specifically designed for surface mining applications, with the Pro version designed for extreme blasting conditions, including revolutionary blasting techniques like Multi-Stratum Blasting, Mining Schedule Flexibility and Lightning Risk Reduction. The WebGen 200 Underground Pro is suited to production blasting, while the WebGen 200 Underground Dev has been designed for mechanical assembly and will enable the automation of underground development charging with Avatel™.

Orica and Epiroc have been developed Avatel, billed as a first-of-its-kind, industry-driven semi-automated explosives delivery system, with a prototype machine currently undergoing trials ahead of being commercially ready by the end of 2021.

The charging solution, enabled by Orica’s WebGen wireless initiating system technology, addresses the final step in the underground development cycle yet to benefit substantially from mechanisation and automation.

It is expected to bring a step-change in safety by eliminating the need for wired connections and subsequent exposure to crews at the face, according to Orica. Instead, the entire charging cycle can be completed by a single operator from within the safety of an enclosed cabin, several metres from the face.

The WebGen 200 development program is progressing to plan with comprehensive verification and validation product testing completed, according to Orica. Field trials are planned and will be completed across multiple mining segments and regions in Australia, Canada, Latin America and Europe, ahead of being commercially available from December 2021.