mining innovation
Mining loves a neat correlation – tonnes per shift, dollars per ounce, emissions per unit, but as Peter Burton pointed out at AusIMM’s Critical Minerals 2025 in Perth, one thing that refuses to fit a tidy graph is safety performance.
It’s not every day that a government geoscience leader talks about AI assistants, rare earth mapping, and century-long prosperity in the same breath – but that’s exactly what Melissa Harris did in Perth.
When a government commits to a multi-billion program over 35 years to a single initiative, it’s worth paying attention.
When Jeff Samuels took the stage at the NSW Resources Regulator’s 33rd Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar, he didn’t mince words: excavators roll over, people die, and the only way to ensure real protection is through ISO-certified rollover and falling object protective structures.
Unlocking up to 70 per cent faster mine planning cycles and millions in additional project value is now within reach for operations that combine centralised data systems, virtual twins and advanced optimisation engines.
When Barry McKay walked into Ashton Coal and saw machines cutting stone instead of coal, he knew something had to change.
In open-pit mining, getting the right information at the right time can mean the difference between precise grade control and costly dilution - and one technology is giving operators a sharper, faster view of what lies beneath each bench.
When mining operators are faced with the challenge of dewatering a live tailings storage facility (TSF) under 30 metres of cover, conventional engineering approaches often buckle under pressure - literally and figuratively.
As mining companies increasingly operate from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometres away from the pit or plant, one challenge has remained constant – how to give remote teams the same operational context, detail, and situational awareness they’d have if they were standing on site.
Every hour of downtime costs a mine tens of thousands of dollars, and Professor Amir Gandomi told the NSW Resources Regulator’s Mechanical Engineering Safety Seminar how artificial intelligence is now cutting those losses by predicting failures and optimising operations in seconds.
