By means of a decade-long dedication to bettering security and effectivity in underground mining, Anglo American’s steelmaking coal operations in Australia have reached a big milestone. The corporate’s 10-year imaginative and prescient for a ‘mine of the longer term’ grew to become actuality when all its underground coal mines within the Bowen Basin started working concurrently from Distant Operation Centres (ROCs).
The Central Queensland underground operations have additionally hit one other outstanding milestone, notching up 10,000 longwall mining shears from these ROCs.
Anglo American Australia automation superintendent Matthew Wakeford stated the fast tempo of technological innovation – particularly in areas like information analytics, automation and digitalisation – had unlocked unimaginable alternatives for the mining sector to be safer, extra productive and extra sustainable.
“At Anglo American, we’ve re-imagined mines the place our folks can remotely handle operations from a secure distance, utilizing real-time information to make knowledgeable choices,” stated Wakeford, who will communicate on the Longwall 2025 convention within the Hunter Valley subsequent month.
“Since transitioning to distant operations, we’ve decreased publicity danger to hazardous areas by 22,500 hours throughout our Bowen Basin mine websites.”
Earlier than Anglo American’s Australian operations started their concentrate on autonomous mining within the 2010s, just one identified mine globally had achieved sustainable distant operations – San Juan Mine in america.
Head of Operations Matt Cooper stated greater than 1,000 system initiatives had enabled distant operation success in the course of the firm’s 10-year journey thus far. “Every development in the direction of our imaginative and prescient launched new obstacles, requiring the event of additional know-how able to assembly the distinctive calls for,” he stated.
“But when we’re to unlock the total potential of those developments, we should constantly combine the seasoned experience of our workforce — those that have deeply understood and mastered the complexities of coal mining by way of many years of expertise. Our persons are irreplaceable, and we’re equipping them to develop with the {industry}, preserving a legacy of data that can all the time be important to our success.”
He provides: “By growing state-of-the-art applied sciences and prioritising the well-being of our workforce by way of a collaborative method, our steelmaking coal mines in Australia have emerged as leaders within the {industry}, reshaping the way forward for underground coal mining on a world scale.”
Anglo American’s automation and distant operation know-how journey in Australia has additionally concerned industry-leading Private Proximity Detection methods to maintain coal mine staff secure underground in addition to a trial of remote-controlled stockpile dozers. The tele-remote dozers, designed to enhance operator security on web site, has been trialled on the Capcoal Advanced, close to Middlemount, to cut back publicity to hid stockpile voids.
The transfer is predicted to cut back in-cab dozer publicity time by 45,000 to 75,000 hours a yr as soon as the know-how is absolutely deployed throughout all websites. Wakeford stated the pilot included the retrofit of a stockpile dozer with the most recent Wi-Fi enabled know-how to arrange connectivity between the machine and operator chair within the management centre.
“Working our fleet of dozers from a secure distance will scale back the variety of hours within the cab and absolutely take away our operators from the dozer seat in what’s one other vital development in autonomous mining,” he stated.
In Australia, Anglo American has 5 steelmaking coal mines in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, together with extra three way partnership pursuits in steelmaking coal and manganese, and base metals exploration tasks in Queensland.
