INNOVATION
UNDERGROUND MINING TRENDS
By Kim Kemp and Ntsako Khosa
Plant Equipment and Hire asked Professor Frederick Cawood, director of the Wits Mining
Institute, for comment on the advances being made, the trends, and the technology around
enhancing safety underground.
T
he work undertaken at the Wits Mining Institute
can be grouped under three headings: mechanised
mining, sustainable mining, and digital mining.
Plant Equipment and Hire (PEH): What are the trends that
the Wits Mining Institute (WMI) has seen over the past
five years related to underground mining — automation,
technology, safety, and equipment enhancements?
Frederick Cawood (FC): The increase in the world’s population
and the rising standards of living have continued to drive tnd
for manufactured goods in our daily lives — and many of these
products are dependent on metals and minerals. These global
trends ensure that we cannot survive without mining.
In fact, there is more and more mining required to feed
manufacturing, so we need to find new reserves and access
new ore bodies to meet the demand. But there are fewer
ore bodies, which means that we are running out of available
reserves to meet the rising demand.
The first way of addressing this situation is to do more with
what we have; we need to optimise existing ore bodies and
mine them more efficiently, and for longer. The second strategy
is to find new ore bodies, but with growing environmental
concerns, the mining methods must be environmentally
responsible and preferably ‘invisible’; that is, underground,
as there is often public resistance to having mines near to
communities.
Underground mining, however, presents plenty of its
own challenges and must compete at the same commodity
price with surface mining — which can generally apply larger
machines and achieve better economies of scale, producing
higher volumes at lower costs. Among the constraints is
the limited size of underground excavations, where larger
machines just don’t fit; they must be specially designed for
these conditions, and it is very difficult for existing mines
to introduce more machines due to the confined spaces.
This also creates severe design limitations, and the only way
to overcome that is to become smarter in how we apply
underground innovations.
Underground mining has the opportunity to grow — not
only in South Africa but all over the world — as no one wants
to see a surface mine ‘in their backyard’. However, the market
doesn’t ask whether the mineral production comes from
surface or underground; it wants the mineral at the same price,
so underground mining needs to become more competitive.
This is where technology becomes important, and mining
can benefit from the trend in which the whole world is
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becoming more technologically intensive. There has been huge
progress in becoming connected above the ground, and now it is
a matter of extending the connectivity and digital technologies into
the underground mining space. While this is a strong trend in mining
currently, it is a complicated and difficult environment to navigate; we
need to become a lot smarter.
Technology and connectivity are also important as mining locations
become more remote, and it can help address some of the challenges
related to limited infrastructure availability, affordability, and reliability.
PEH: Are the solutions to the challenges more expensive than
above ground?
FC: Mining underground is certainly more expensive because we
need more infrastructure, including shafts and extensive underground