World-first autonomous road train for Onslow Iron project in Pilbara, WA

Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN) will deploy the world’s first fully autonomous road trains equipped with autonomous haulage solutions, thanks to a landmark agreement with specialists Hexagon AB (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B).

The fleet of 120 road trains has been designed and developed for the diversified miner’s flagship Onslow Iron project in WA, thereby ensuring safer, more sustainable and more productive transport activities for the project.

MinRes chief executive of mining services Mike Grey says the company is excited to cement its partnership with Hexagon to deliver the world’s first fleet of autonomous road trains.

“[This] will be an essential part of Onslow Iron’s safe, efficient and dust-free solution for hauling ore,” he said.

“Automation will remove the risk of driver fatigue, lower operating costs and reduce fuel use and emissions.

“There’s enormous potential for these vehicles to transform mining across the world.”

Hexagon president and chief executive Paolo Guglielmini says the company sees autonomy as a way to vastly improve the world we live in.

“Today’s agreement with MinRes will ensure that transport activities will be safer, more sustainable, and more productive,” he said.

“I’m excited to see how similar solutions can be applied in other markets such as agriculture and heavy industry.”

Operational benefits for MinRes include the removal of driver fatigue risk, increase of fleet availability, reduction of operating costs, including fuel use and emissions, as well as creating a dust-free supply chain.

How it all works together

The world-first, fully autonomous road trains are a full-site, truck-agnostic solution.

The centre of the autonomous platooning system is Hexagon’s autonomous solutions stack integrating drive-by-wire technology with an autonomous management system to orchestrate vehicle movement in road train haulage.

A team of operators will control the fleet from a central operating centre in Onslow.

MinRes is also developing an artificial intelligence-powered monitoring system.

Each triple-trailer vehicle will carry 330t of iron ore about 150km on a dedicated private haul road from the Ken’s Bore mine site to the Port of Ashburton.

Safety through grade separation will ensure there is no interaction between the autonomous road trains operating on the haul road and vehicles using public roads.

Ore will be transported to a 220,000t enclosed, negative pressure storage facility at the port. From there, 20,000t capacity transhippers will move the ore to cape-size carriers 40km off the coast.

Testing of autonomous road trains has been progressing at MinRes’ Yilgarn iron ore operations since late 2021 ahead of the technology’s deployment at Onslow Iron.

The project, which is the cornerstone of MinRes’ strategy to deliver low-cost, long-life iron ore operations, will ship about 35mt of iron ore per year from mid-2024.