Mines speeding up automation amid virus threat

The South African mining sector, which employs about 420,000 people, will have to speed up its transition to automated operation as the Covid-19 outbreak brings uncertainty to the immediate future of several mining operations around the world.

But the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has retorted that it would take years for the country’s mines to be automated and therefore they foresee no immediate threat to job losses.

NUM president Joseph Montisetse said: “Automation would be a blow to the mining workforce but it is clear that that is where the future of mining is headed. This is a change we cannot stop. However, this would take a serious reconfiguration of the mines because they were not designed for automation.”

He said, for instance, mining operations were continuing in countries like Canada and Russian, though they were under lockdown.

Restrictions on social contact have meant that mining projects have either slowed or been put on hold, which could herald an increased appeal and demand for solutions to reduce the human workforce at mine sites.

The epidemic has wreaked havoc in the sector that is key to the country’s economic backbone, with share-prices of listed mining companies and commodity prices tumbling.

According to Shabir Ahmed, Industry Advisor for Mining at SAP Africa, Sibanye-Stillwater’s share price has lost over 60% in the past four weeks, while Impala Platinum has lost a similar percentage and Anglo American was down by as much as 40%.

Depending on how long this crisis lasts, the mining industry could see big moves into autonomous mining technologies in the not-too-distant future.

Though it was not possible to predict how Covid-19 will further disrupt the mining industry, Ahmed said what was certain was that the mining industry must reconfigure and prepare itself to operate under a new normal.

He said the new normal meant the ability of the mining sector to operate and sustain itself under the new constraints and challenges that pandemics such as the Covid-19 bring with them.

The uptake of automated mine solutions, including self-driving haul trucks and remote operations centers, has been slow but steady, Ahmed has said.

“One of the earliest moves into automation came with global mining giant Rio Tinto’s Mine of the Future initiative in 2008. From a remote operations center in Perth, Western Australia, workers operate autonomous mining vehicles at mines more than 1,200km away in the Pilbara region of Western Australia,” he said.

Today, around a third of the haul truck fleet at Rio Tinto’s Pilbara mines are autonomous and the Syama underground gold mine in Mali, became the world’s first fully autonomous mine operation.

“The mine operates with fully automated trucks, loaders and drills.

“The fully autonomous operation means that the mine can operate 24 hours a day, with all operations overseen from a remote operation centre,” Ahmed added.

– siphom@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.