EXPLOSIVES AND BLASTING
Rapid re-entry
One of the major pain points with underground blasting is the amount of productive time that is lost after the blast has taken place, Maestro Digital Mine said. Once the round has been fired, the heading is unavailable until the mine can confirm that conditions are safe for re-entry. In many operations, that still means waiting a prescribed amount of time and then sending personnel underground to manually verify gas levels, airflow and general conditions before work can resume.
That process is necessary from a safety perspective, but it can also be slow, labour-intensive and difficult to optimise
“ The challenge is uncertainty,” Maestro said.“ Conditions after a blast are not always the same. Fume clearance can be affected by heading location, ventilation performance, leakage, auxiliary fan operation, door positions, mine layout and the stage of development. Without reliable, real-time information, mines often have to manage re-entry conservatively. That protects people, but it can also extend downtime, delay the next activity in the cycle and reduce available working time at the face.”
Maestro helps address this by giving mines better visibility into the underground environment, it said.“ Our air quality monitoring systems, including Vigilante AQS V2 and Zephyr AQS, as well as our new software platform, Duetto Analytics, are designed to measure key ventilation and environmental parameters in real time, including gases, airflow, temperature and humidity, depending on the configuration,” it said.“ This allows mine
Maestro helps address the uncertainty associated with underground blast clearance by giving mines better visibility into the underground environment
teams to monitor post-blast conditions from surface or a control room, trend the data, identify abnormal conditions and make reentry decisions with better information.”
The objective is not to shortcut safety procedures, but to reduce uncertainty.
“ When ventilation and operations teams can see what is happening underground in real time, they are better equipped to confirm clearance, investigate delays, improve ventilation performance and recover productive time where it is safe and appropriate to do so,” Maestro said.
For mine sites, confidence comes from seeing the data align with what they experience underground, according to the company.
“ As operators, ventilation teams and safety personnel review live readings alongside their existing practices, the platform becomes part of the operating rhythm,” Maestro said.“ Over time, the data helps support more informed re-entry decisions, reduce unnecessary waiting where conditions have already cleared and identify situations where additional ventilation attention is needed before crews return to the face.”
As one would expect, this increased data-backed visibility comes with a positive financial impact that stems from recovering time in the mining cycle.
“ After a blast, every minute spent waiting for clearance is time when the heading is not advancing, crews are not working at the face and equipment may be standing by,” Maestro explained.“ In isolation, a single delay may not appear significant. But across multiple headings, multiple blasts and repeated shifts, that lost time can quickly become a meaningful production constraint.”
The exact value depends on the mine and is influenced by the number of blasts per day, the length of the re-entry delay, the number of crews and pieces of equipment affected, the value of the material being mined, and whether the delay impacts development metres, ore tonnes, or downstream activities.
“ A practical way to look at it is: time recovered per blast, multiplied by the number of blast cycles, multiplied by the value of that recovered operating time,” Maestro explained.“ That value may show up as additional rounds completed, more development metres advanced, improved equipment utilisation, reduced crew standby time, or better adherence to the mine plan.”
There can also be secondary financial benefits, with better visibility into post-blast conditions helping mines identify ventilation issues that are causing unnecessary delays, reduce repeated manual checks and improve planning around re-entry.
“ In some cases, the value is not only in returning sooner, but in understanding why one heading clears faster than another and using that information to improve the process,” Maestro said, allowing for improvements in ventilation planning and optimisation.
“ The key point is that blast clearance is not only a safety process; it is also a production bottleneck. When mines have better real-time visibility, they are in a stronger position to manage that bottleneck safely and recover productive time where conditions allow.”
In a competitive market for these types of sensor-based solutions, Maestro emphasises using the total cost of ownership metric, and, in particular, how easily the system can be installed, integrated, maintained, troubleshot and trusted over time.
“ Maestro’ s differentiation is that our platforms are designed specifically for underground mine environments and ventilation applications,” it said.“ These are harsh, changing conditions where dust, humidity, vibration, limited access and moving work areas are part of daily operations. Instrumentation has to be robust, but it also has to be practical for mine personnel to support.”
52 International Mining | AUGUST 2026