Fortescue Metals Group (ASX: FMG) has signed a six-year contract with Dyno Nobel to use its DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY™ blasting technology at Iron Bridge in Pilbara, WA.
The performance-based contract, which began last month, will see Dyno Nobel, a business of Incitec Pivot Limited (ASX: IPL), provide 25,000tpa of DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY emulsion for use at magnetite project by mid-decade.
Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific President Greg Hayne welcomes the contract win, which builds on the company’s existing relationship with Fortescue in the Pilbara region.
“Customers are increasingly coming to appreciate how DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY can reduce downstream capital and processing costs, whilst improving productivity and reducing emissions from blasting,” he said.
In 2019, Fortescue operations managers visited Dyno Nobel’s operations in the Iron Range of Minnesota and Michigan, USA, where DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY emulsion technology was used successfully on hard taconite deposits similar to Iron Bridge’s magnetite orebodies.
DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY tailors the explosives energy to the rock properties in a blast hole, resulting in higher energy blasting for harder rock types – such as magnetite – and less intense blasting for softer orebodies, waste and overburden.
A spokesperson for Dyno Nobel says this technology allows miners to modify the explosives energy delivered in order to match the differing rock characteristics that exist within each blast, even within individual blast holes.
“As a result, miners can use DIFFERENTIAL ENERGY to increase productivity and reduce their downstream processing costs, whilst also reducing the potential for flyrock and improving the carbon footprint from blasting,” the spokesperson said.
Dyno Nobel is IPL’s global explosives business and the second largest industrial explosives distributor in Australia and North America.
Through Dyno Nobel Asia Pacific, IPL provides ammonium nitrate based industrial explosives, initiating systems and services to the metallurgical coal and base & precious metals sectors in Australia, and internationally to a number of countries including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Turkey through its subsidiaries and joint ventures.
