UNDERGROUND LOAD & HAUL
The 18-t-payload battery-electric and automation-ready Sandvik LH518iB( pictured) has roughly the same footprint as the 14-t-payload LH514
Bottom line benefits
The adoption of underground automation continues to accelerate, but the pace of electrification uptake has slowed as catalyst priorities shift, Dan Gleeson reports
The transition to diesel-powered alternatives in the underground load and haul market was a major talking point at The Electric Mine 2025, in Santiago, Chile, in May – understandable considering the event’ s aims to encourage the move away from fossil fuel-dominated propulsion sources.
In 2019, the same year The Electric Mine conference series debuted, there was a sense of inevitability around this transition, with the obvious move being a batteryelectric one.
The Borden operation in Ontario, Canada, had managed to achieve the‘ all-electric’ milestone against all the odds, getting equipment suppliers to provide batteryelectric variants of existing diesel machines or teaming up with specialist engineers to convert diesel equipment to batteryelectric form. Kirkland Lake Gold’ s Macassa operation had also managed to successfully make a major decarbonisation dent in its underground fleet emissions thanks to the use of battery-electric load and haul equipment.
The rationale for both moves were around operating cost benefits and environmental considerations, with batteryelectric options providing flexibility over traditional trolley or cable-electric solutions.
Other projects were also being talked about that had to include electric fleets due to the associated ventilation costs and requirements of using diesel equipment – the Glencore Onaping Depth project being the obvious case study.
These examples were concentrated in Canada, but they combined with global market catalysts as investors started to appreciate action on the way to achieving company-wide decarbonisation goals; acknowledging mining equities that offered not only production growth and higher margins, but also‘ greener’ products.
In line with this, OEMs started to invest in battery-electric offerings.
This was also reinforced in the M & A market, with Sandvik’ s acquisition of Artisan Vehicle Systems a case in point.
It wasn’ t quite a perfect storm, but the conditions were there to think decarbonisation and electrification would happen and, in the underground space, battery-electric technologies would be the most obvious route.
Mining company moves in the years since have cast some doubt over this assertion, with goals pushed back and technology investments paused. To generalise, longterm thinking that may have prioritised battery-electric fleet selection has been replaced by shorter-term strategies looking for‘ slot in’ solutions that require less infrastructure and less change management, but, on the opposite side, have less impact from a sustainability perspective.
At The Electric Mine 2025, diesel-electric, hybrid, battery-trolley and other solutions were flagged at the same time as quotes were heard about there being no“ silver bullets”.
‘ The only way to go’
There is a consensus rapidly building around these words influencing technology developments.
OEMs continue to invest in cleaner, conventional diesel-based internal combustion engine( ICE) technology, introducing Stage V-compliant engines into load and haul equipment that can use HVO biodiesel, allowing such equipment to continue to operate with reduced CO2 emissions in the future.
This represents another interim step in moving away from the current status quo. Brian Huff, Vice President of New
Technology, Load and Haul, Sandvik Mining
International Mining | JULY 2025 19