The Austmine Mining Innovation Roadshow was held in Brisbane on 15 March 2024.
The roadshow included a range of speakers and panelists discussing topics surrounding the theme of “embracing innovation and collaboration for a sustainable future.”
Mipac's key takeaways from the Austmine Brisbane Mining Innovation Roadshow
Session 1: Powering the future: Mining leading the energy transition
Session one included two presentations, two keynote presentations and one panel.
Maki Ikeda from BHP discussed harnessing the power of many to accelerate the energy in the minerals sector. Key takeaways included:
- How to consider whole orebody value
- How to adjust our mindset about waste and flip to creating value
- BHP ventures
Akhilesh Jain from Rockwell Automation and Maxwell Norris from Harmony Gold SE Asia discussed:
- Plant-wide MPC
- The secrets to high operator adoptions
- 75 per cent of plants are still running basic control. 100 per cent of plants require basic control before you can apply advanced control
The third presentation was from Simon Linge from Lithium Australia who talked about the blueprint for the critical minerals revolution. His presentation included:
- Lithium recycling expected to grow by 20 per cent year on year until 2036
- Profit margin in battery minerals is the lowest in the mining step of the value chain
- Innovation and leadership are required for lithium processing in Australia to succeed.
The first panel of the day discussed the topic ‘Accelerating the development of technologies to meet our decarbonisation targets’.
This discussion included:
- Pathways to achieving net zero, including:
- Improving efficiency
- Alternative fuels
- Exploring alternative haulage
- Electrification
- The elimination of diesel
- 5G being a key enabler
- The biggest obstacles to the delivery of a fully electrified mine
- Enabling more green energy use on mine sites
- The most important priorities
- Coming up with ideas that do not increase costs for the user and maintain the same productivity level
- The importance of safety when new hazards are being introduced through electrification
- The importance of collaboration to achieve net zero goals
Session one concluded with a presentation from Scott Winter from Critical Minerals Group, which included:
- 99.5% of the mining industry is likely to miss 1.5 degree target
- Most renewable energy sources require power storage – batteries
- Vanadium batteries still only store for 12 hours, however, we need a week of storage
Session 2: Innovation spotlight presentations
Session two included insights into technologies transforming the mining industry.
Presentations included:
- Trent Smith from Thiess discussed the importance of connectivity, upskilling existing roles to autonomous roles, and digital transformation success insights.
- Luke Dawson from SafeGauge discussed the dangers of testing mobile plants, and the wireless monitoring system SafeGauge has created to allow workers to test machinery remotely
- Derek Berg from Berg Engineering discussed how family businesses partner with METS and clients who have far larger budgets than their own
- Kieran Knowles from Orica discussed 4D optimising blasting technology and how they are leading the change of digitised blasting using explosives smarter
- Simon Thompson from Russell Mineral Equipment discussed:
- How to keep the ice in Antarctica while also keeping the lights on
- Innovating with purpose
- Finding ways to deliver step-change improvements incrementally
- Understanding the system, undertaking system engineering
- Don’t just focus on the tech, innovate the implementation process too
- Human factors are critical for success and safety
- Greg Phillips from Vocus discussed the value of data and Vocus’ capabilities
- Claire Sangster from NEXTDC Limited finished session two by discussing positive disruption, the need to enable digital innovation for impact, having a holistic approach, committing to life-long learning and being agile, noting we can’t afford to fail fast in critical engineering.
Session 3: Securing the future: leveraging the digital age
Session three included two keynote presentations and one panel discussion.
First was Bill Haylock from PX4 Software who discussed the secrets of good governance in land access approvals.
Next was Luke Krois from Agnico Eagle, who discussed the importance of collaboration and innovation. He also discussed how we need to adapt to new realities and evolving responsibilities in regard to achieving net zero by 2050.
The second panel of the day had the topic ‘Accelerating the intelligent mine – automation and AI’. This panel featured Mipac‘s Solutions Manager Dominic Stoll.
Key takeaways from this panel included:
- The key lessons learned in enhancing safety and efficiency
- How mining can compare to other industries
- What priorities there should be when looking to make progress
- The workforce ramifications for ramping up technology
- Skills shortage – enabling the people that we do have in the sector to be more productive
- Energy consumption – producing more efficiently to reduce emissions
- Whether automation and AI are the way to improve the problems in the mining industry
Session 4: Beyond the horizon: the innovation frontier
The last keynote presentation of the day was Laim Scanlan from HINDSITE Industries, who discussed how to standardise the way work is done and how to fix inconsistent task execution to prepare for the future. Liam posed the question – how do you standardise systems so they cater to your people and your work complexity? He noted that this can be done by making sure the people have the right systems. For example, the person on-site needs accessible systems.
The final panel of the day discussed the topic ‘METS and ESG: Navigating the evolving landscape’.
Key takeaways from this panel included:
- The pace of change in ESG and regulatory standards
- What new skills we need in a constantly changing environment
- Not being able to attract Gen Z to mining; people won’t stay if they don’t see ESG efforts, and young people won’t work for companies that don’t have credibility on sustainability
- Sustainable innovation
- Building a diverse innovation and embracing neurodiversity.
Thanks to Seelan Moodley (Evolution Mining), William Clarke (Waterline Projects), Jens Herzog (Multotec Pty Ltd) and Matthew Graham (Anglo American) for attending with the Mipac team.
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The Austmine Mining Innovation Roadshow was held in Brisbane on 15 March 2024. The roadshow included a range of speakers and panelists …
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