Category: Tech Talk

DUNNING’S is one of the few companies in the country that have raised the bat to celebrate 50 years in business (55 in fact), growing to include wholesale fuel distribution, a fleet of fuel cartage trucks, 20 company owned fuel sites and a retail truck stop network in association with Shell. Added to this is a presence in the Pilbara, Gascoyne, Kimberley, Wheatbelt, South West WA, Perth and Goldfields. Dunning’s also has a strong involvement with the supply of fuels to agriculture and aviation. It is little wonder then that this third-generation business has a significant involvement in the mining industry, featuring some tailor-made fuel solutions. Transportable fuel tanks The first major facet of the company’s mine site solution is…

AdaptFMS by FluidIntel is an advanced fuel management system designed for mining operations. It provides real-time monitoring, automated fuel ordering, and detailed analytics across entire mine sites to improve efficiency, reduce fuel loss, and ensure regulatory compliance. By integrating hardware instrumentation, secure authentication, and cloud-based reporting, the system enables companies to accurately track fuel usage, streamline supply chains, and unlock significant cost savings and fuel tax credit returns.

LED lighting is the way of the future in terms of light output and fuel input efficiencies. The apparent overnight success of this technology has actually been years in the making and that extended period of development has led to some ground-breaking products with multiple applications on the mine site. Promac International is a WA-based company that made its start by sourcing machinery for the civil and mining industry in the Pilbara, eventually settling on developing its own brand of lighting towers and generators. These were two critical areas in which they believed they could deliver the most value and expertise to the mining industry. With a constant drive for increased safety, efficiency and innovation, Promac was one of the…

AUSTRAL Technologies’ SPOTX hardfacing products are revolutionary materials specifically designed to combat extreme in-service degradation and provide the best performance in aggressive environments where impact, abrasion and corrosive wear are critical sources of material failure. While SPOT60 has been setting the industry standard for more than 15 years, the company has recently introduced the new SPOTX range to provide customised impact, abrasion and corrosion resistant solutions to condition-specific applications. The products have been designed to provide a more cost effective option to the SPOT60, for something that is almost comparable with SPOT60 wear resistance. By utilising computational metallurgy to create a new series of hardfacing overlay materials, SPOTX deposits have been designed and application techniques developed to produce deposits for…

THERE is a lot of confusion about what you need to do to get a start in a hard rock mine. Here are 15 important facts that every new starter in the Australian hard rock mining industry needs to know: 1.The boom is back on and there is strong demand for new workers in exploration and hard rock underground mines across Australia. Go to Seek and type “underground” into the first box and you’ll see that there are thousands of these well-paid, full-time jobs, going on hard rock mines (gold, nickel, copper, rare earths) all over the country. 2.There are no new jobs in iron ore or oil and gas jobs. While there are a handful of jobs that come…

2MT Mining Products provides a range of market-leading consumable wear products for mining extraction applications, Columbia Steel dragline chain, Advantage dragline rigging, MTG ground engaging tools, 2TUFF hard-faced wear plate for minerals processing wear prevention, 2TUFF blades and edges for dozers graders and wheel loaders, as well as direct replacement products (DRPs). The company’s in-house engineering innovation centre uses the latest 3D solid modelling, 3D printing and finite element analysis tools to assist with creating reliable and lightweight wear components. These tools, coupled with the company’s experienced team of designers and engineers, place 2MT products in an enviable position in the mining extraction products supply chain. 2MT boasts the longest campaign life for its dragline hoist and drag rigging systems,…

DT HiLoad specialises in the design and manufacture of dump truck bodies and mining buckets for the resources sector, with a skilled and committed workforce to deliver specific solutions for clients. With catchy product names and slogans including “Hercules, the strongest tray in earth”, “Bullant, toughest underground” and “Barracuda, buckets with bite”, the company says it can provide solutions above and below ground and beyond, with support from parent company Schlam Group. General manager Glenn Brearey said the company had positioned itself as a market leader in the sector by identifying new and innovative ways of solving common problems backed by exceptional customer service across the value cycle. “Innovation is at our core and safety is a priority,” Mr Brearey…

MICROMINE is a comprehensive and easy to use exploration and mine design solution and can bring benefits to almost every stage of the mining value chain. From prospecting and exploration through to geological modelling using implicit, stratigraphic and/or explicit methods), to resource modelling for geologists and for engineers, Micromine covers life-of-mine design and planning through to daily operations in open pit or underground mines. Product strategy manager Mark Gabbitus spoke to the Australian Mining Review about how the software can improve functionality and productivity on site. “Having data in a single system throughout the process will definitely improve the ability of geologists, engineers and surveyors to collaborate and work together – increasing productivity just by making their lives easy,” Mr…

EQUIPMENT on mine sites can face extreme conditions, so protective coatings are essential to ensure machinery functions to a high standard for its entire life cycle. Unfortunately, the drying time in coating systems has traditionally be a long and drawn-out process, with one day needed for the primer coats, the need for sanding between each coat and a final day required to apply the top coat. Masterblasters owner and general manager Tim Hamblin was confident the company could find a solution and avoid this extensive downtime – and that solution was the three-coat system. “We developed the three-coat system with our paint supplier, Paint-n-Colour Toowoomba, which would allow us to reduce the drying time on coatings by 33 per cent,”…

MODERN mining is a complex business but its core principles are deceptively simple: dig a commodity out of the ground, process that commodity to the point where it is saleable, and then transport it to the customer. In most cases the total resource in the ground has a finite value (subject to variations in commodity prices) and every cost associated with extracting that resource over the life of mine, by definition, diminishes net profitability. The goal then is to focus on cost reduction and production efficiency to increase production, profits and share price. Assets are a significant cost in every mining operation and their effective management should be a core focus for any mining operation. Savvy management monitors the return…

THE storage and inventory management of explosives is a significant responsibility for mining companies. Ultimately, the company and its senior management are accountable for the responsible use and inventory control of all explosives. However, conventional explosives inventory control processes are often lacking in terms of accuracy, auditability and timelines. The problem primarily arises from the timeliness and inaccuracies introduced through manual and paper-based reporting of explosives movements in and out of the company’s magazine. Typically, these paper-based systems require operators to populate complex and often dishevelled tabulated stock sheets with the inventory movements in and out of the magazine. Operators are often inattentive and not inclined to accurately complete paper based stock sheets due to their complexity. By the time…