The mining industry is facing tremendous economic challenges.
Fluctuating and depressed commodity prices, the ever-increasing
pressure from environmental legislation and the competing global
opportunities for capital investment are placing enormous strains
on every aspect of the mining business. At the same time, mines
are generally becoming older and deeper with all the logistical
and rock mechanics difficulties that this entails. In the face of these new challenges the industry looks to
technological advances to make operations more efficient and
profitable. One approach is to develop and implement highly
automated and computerised equipment as part of a trend towards
major reductions in the underground workforce. This approach
requires more capital investment rather than less and requires a
more sophisticated and well-educated workforce with skills
which are generally in high demand in society as a whole. It is
difficult to see how the benefit that can be gained from such
technology can justify the expenditures necessary to make it
operate reliably underground on a daily basis. Nor is it easy to
foresee how the mining industry, based as it is often in very
remote areas, will be able to hire and retain sufficient numbers of
people to maintain such fleets of equipment. Another approach, and the one which I favour, is the
implementation of much greater control over the whole of the
mining process. Mining is essentially a very simple process - we break rock and move it. The most cost-effective means of
moving and processing the mining product depends entirely on
the way it is broken - it depends on primary fragmentation by
blasting. I propose that the way forward for the industry in the
face of our present difficulties, is not new technology but is to
utilise the level of technology which currently exists in ways
which have traditionally been regarded as too difficult or too
inflexible - improved fragmentation and the use of conveyors.
The technical success of this approach depends on the complete
re-design of the ore handling system from the face or stope
drawpoint to surface. The fundamental issue which determines
the success of this approach is designed fragmentation.