Editorial: Invasion of the robominers!

In a sign of the times that would make any union leader do a double take, Rio Tinto has announced that it and a minority partner will spend US$518 million on robotrains to haul its iron ore in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

The iron ore giant says this will be the world’s first automated long-distance heavy-haul network using driverless trains when it launches in 2014. An automated train program called “AutoHaul” is slated to come online the following year, as part of a three-year transition process. The company says the changeover will improve productivity, increase scheduling flexibility, improve safety and remove driver changeover times as it seeks to meet its 60% expansion targets in the Pilbara region.

Right now in Pilbara, Rio Tinto has a 1,500-km rail network upon which it runs 41 trains from mines to ports, using an astonishing 148 locomotives and 9,400 iron ore cars. Rio Tinto notes that its Pilbara iron ore mines and infrastructure — which include 14 mines, three ports and two railways — have been controlled remotely for the past 18 months from an operations centre in Perth, which boasts over 400 employees.

By no means is that all: Rio Tinto’s wider, four-year-old “Mines of the Future” program includes trying out autonomous production drills and the deployment of 150 driverless trucks at its iron ore operations in Western Australia, following a two-year trial at the West Angelas mine there. 

The company reports that it is expanding other trials of new shaft and tunnel boring systems aimed at dramatically speeding up underground excavations. The first tunnel-boring trial, in partnership with Aker Wirth, will begin this year at the Northparkes copper-gold mine in New South Wales, Australia, and the miner is sussing out locations for a shaft-boring trial. A second tunnel-boring trial, in partnership with Atlas Copco, will get underway in 2013 at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Utah Copper (KUC) mine in Salt Lake City, using Atlas Copco’s new boring system to tunnel more than 10 metres a day, or nearly twice the rate of conventional methods.

Above ground, Rio Tinto says it is pushing technological boundaries by developing world-class, mineral-sorting technology in partnership with Norwegian company TOMRA Sorting Solutions — a leading global supplier of automated sensor-based systems used in recycling and food processing.

Rio Tinto says it wants to boost its iron ore and copper sorting technologies so it can sort up to 1,000 tonnes of rock an hour.

Another partnership is with U.K.-based e2v to develop machines that would use large-scale microwave and radio frequency generators to improve the efficiency of mineral recovery from previously discarded ore. Rio Tinto says it wants to update its mineral recovery technologies, such as Copper NuWave, which might be trialled later this year at KUC.

Rio Tinto is pouring money into advanced exploration technologies, too, such as its VK1 airborne gravity gradiometer, which the company says detects tiny changes in the earth’s gravitational field that can indicate the presence of mineral deposits.

It says a first complete system was flown in August 2010 and in 2011. A second improved system was built in 2011 and is being flight tested near Perth with an eye towards flying over the Pilbara region later this year. 

• Leading Canadian business law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt tallied up last year’s hits and misses in Canada’s capital markets in its latest annual Capital Markets Review.  In contrast to some of the bullishness over the Canadian economy, the review shows signs of weakness in Canadian mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate finance activity.

OH&H found that $51 billion in equity capital was raised in 2011, down 8% from 2010. It comments that the Canadian initial public offering market “performed strongly in the first half of the year but weakened considerably” in the second half, with deals often getting shelved or cancelled. 

OH&H tabulated there were 67 conventional corporate initial public offerings on the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange in 2011, compared with 83 in 2010, or a 19% drop. As well, $160 billion of new corporate debt was issued in 2011, down 3% from 2010.

M&A activity was “generally flat” and well off the highs of 2007, says OH&H, with the total value of deals announced being $231 billion in 2011.