Next week sees the fifth and latest edition of The Electric Mine conference – this year it is being held at Centro Parque in Las Condes, Santiago, Chile. Global leader in mining utility equipment and technology, Normet, is a Gold Sponsor, and ahead of the event IM talked to Herkko Juntunen, Product Line Director, Logistics & Transportation and Scaling; & Mika Kinnunen, Director, Electrification and Mid-life Services about its strong footprint in Chile, its distinct SmartDrive offering and its approach to differing customer requirements in the market.
Q As the largest supplier of non-primary fleet equipment to underground mining worldwide, how important is Chile for Normet as a country and as a market?
HJ: Latin America an is important market area for Normet and Chile is our main location in Latin America. We have a factory and service centre in Santiago, where we are manufacturing certain equipment models and doing rebuilds. In addition, Chile was one of the first countries where we delivered BEVs and currently we have a sizeable BEV fleet operating in Latin America, so yes Chile is and will remain an important country and market for Normet.
MKi: Chile is one of the largest underground mining markets for us in terms of fleet size in one country. Chile also is the main hub location for us in the Latin American market meaning that South America continent-wide activities are led from Chile. Key Chilean decision makers have also indicated that the country wants to be among the early adopters in BEV equipment in mining which highlights the importance of the country in mine electrification development.
Q Related to this, are there particular aspects to Chile that are notable in terms of the size of its underground mines and how its operators and contractors approach tasks like rock reinforcement and explosives charging?
HJ: Hard rock mining methods remain similar everywhere, but many Chilean mines are forerunners in implementing the latest technologies to maximise operational efficiency, for example emulsion charging, battery electric and autonomous equipment. Also, the scale of mining is big in Chile and located there are some of the biggest and oldest underground mines in the world, which generates a lot of demand for our equipment and for high level aftermarket support.
Q Normet has developed SmartDrive almost completely in-house – what advantages has that given you in terms of flexibility in product development as well as your ability to react to market changes?
MKi: When developing or implementing new technologies, customer understanding is always the key, and we have over half a century of experience in manufacturing underground mining equipment for mines around the world. By having the key capabilities, such as deep mining process knowledge and BEV, automation and high-technology expertise in-house, we can develop innovative solutions to meet even the most demanding and unique customer requirements. In addition, implementing new technologies requires additional support from the OEMs, and it is essential that the OEM can, on top of providing the equipment and technologies, also help the customer with technology implementation, process optimisation, training of the personnel, and field support, and in the BEV case, also on the operation and infrastructure planning.
Q The market seems to have evolved in several directions – with some customers wanting to fast-track zero emissions battery electric solutions, some wanting other options such as your ElectroDynamic offering, and still others looking to maximise the possibilities of conventional equipment. As a company how are you making sure you can offer all things to all customers from a supply chain and projected demand point of view?
HJ: For us, the key to being able to serve customers with different technological requirements, is utilising modular platforms, which means in our case, that we can utilise, for example, the same cabins and application modules regardless of the platform and the power source, and make a wide offering of applications on top of modular, standard platforms. This helps also our customers to optimise their spare parts inventories, and the same skillset can be used to service the whole fleet. In addition to developing battery-electric solutions, we are continuously developing also our diesel offering, aiming to make those as clean and safe as possible, following the highest safety standards, as diesel equipment will remain a backbone of our offering for a long time, because of the high global demand.
MKi: We see that flexibly adapting to different types of customer requirements and unique operational environments is a must. BEV equipment can bring harmonisation possibilities between areas having different requirements for example in diesel emissions. This can offer possibilities with companies operating globally.
Q Each mining equipment manufacturer has taken their own path in terms of battery chemistry, charging method, supporting software and other aspects. While some of this relates to the different power demands on different machine types, as electric fleets become more established, do you see a need or reality for more OEM-agnostic standardisation?
MKi: As an OEM with niche applications, I see that standardisation can offer significant savings, which can then benefit both the customer and the OEM. Standardisation of interfaces, including battery charging interfaces, as well as form factors or voltage levels can be beneficial, but potentially limiting technologies with standards and regulations might cause more harm than benefit. In battery systems, I do not see that regulating chemistry would be the way to go, but form factor and voltage level of battery modules or packs could be beneficial to make designs more easily upgradable when technology develops.
Q You have come a long way already with your range and offering for low emissions mining. What are the big remaining hurdles for Normet and for the industry? Proving the technology more widely in a production setting and achieving same or better results versus conventional?
HJ: BEV technology is already proving its capabilities in mining applications, and the technology is becoming more mature which further increases reliability and efficiency, and helps to bring costs down. The biggest obstacle that needs to be overcome to enable full-scale electric transformation in mining, is related to battery charging infrastructure. Old mines have challenges in this area, because of poor electric grids, which cannot support fully electric fleets, so some investments in infrastructure are needed before the full potential of battery-electric equipment can be achieved.
MKi: We have proven that BEV technology is efficient and productive in numerous Normet equipment applications. The next big step is to enable scaling up of fleets to a fully electrified operations level.
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