Resumen de Driverless platoons set to cut cost of mineral haulage

Industrial Minerals

• Automated trucks used on mine sites could soon offer cost savings on the roads, Rose Pengelly, IM Correspondent, discovers.

  Giant convoys or "platoons" of driverless trucks could soon slash the cost of transporting large volumes of minerals by road, making it more economical to produce low value industrial minerals at significant distances from end markets.

  Both haulage firms and some of the world's leading mining companies are investing heavily in automation as part of a wider drive for efficiency amid falling prices for commodities and rising labour costs.

  To date, such innovation has largely been confined to mine sites, but speaking at a recent conference in London, Bold Baatar, CEO of the Energy and Minerals division at mining giant Rio Tinto, said that mining companies need to take full advantage of technologies such as data storage and predictive analytics tools to fully optimise their logistics chains.

  Rio Tinto Minerals, which produces borates, titanium minerals and salt, expects to be one of the main beneficiaries of Rio Tinto's "Mine of the Future" initiative, which uses data and smart technology to reduce manpower and increase productivity at its operations.

  So far, Rio has sought to introduce automation to the company's core portfolio of large, low-cost, long-life assets, principally in its iron ore division, which has been using driverless trucks in Australia for a decade, Baatar said.