Zijin Mining begins producing its own electric mining trucks with partner Longking
Zijin Mining has announced a major sustainability milestone – its total installed clean energy capacity has officially surpassed 1,000 MW. This achievement reflects successful grid connections across its global operations, including a 70 MW wind power project at Bayannur Zijin in China;Â a 23.87 MW solar project in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and a a 25 MW solar facility at Rosebel Gold Mine in Suriname. It states: “Together, these projects mark meaningful progress in our green and low-carbon development journey.
Alongside expanding renewable energy generation, Zijin says it continues to implement comprehensive energy-saving initiatives, including waste heat recovery systems. As a result, by the end of 2024, carbon emissions per RMB 10,000 of industrial added value decreased by 35% compared to 2020, while renewable energy now accounts for more than 50% of its total electricity consumption.
But the transition also extends to green fleets in mining. Since 2020, the Zijin electric vehicle fleet has grown from 13 to 1,183 vehicles, and Xinjiang Zijin Zinc in China it says has become the single mine with the world’s largest fleet of pure electric mining trucks. These trucks have included models supplied by Breton Technology, which is headquartered in Shanghai and listed on the HKSE in May 2025. Breton has introduced three main BEV mining truck models to the market. In August 2022, it launched a 105-t model, the BRT105E, which enabled heavy-load uphill operations. In the second half of 2024, it launched a 120 t model, the BRT120E, with a greater payload and the 135 t range-extended model BRT135E. It also supplies its own autonomous driving solutions for use in conjunction with its battery electric trucks.
In its 2024 Sustainability Report released in 2025, Zijin Mining stated that the Xinjiang Zijin Zinc mine had 250 all electric mining trucks undertaking 80% of the transportation tasks in the mining area. It added: “The energy cost per tonne kilometre for electric mining trucks is only about RMB0.177, compared to as high as RMB0.68 when using fossil energy. In addition, the safety and operating efficiency of electric mining trucks have notable advantages over diesel trucks. With fewer complex transmission components such as engines and transmissions, these trucks have a much lower failure rate than that of fossil fuel vehicles. Moreover, the simpler operation of electric vehicles reduces the risk of accidents due to operational errors.”
At this operation and at other mines, Zijin is also working with other major battery mining truck OEMs – for example at the Zhibula copper mine, part of the Julong Copper Mine complex, Zijin is deploying 60 SANY battery mining trucks fitted with EACON’s autonomous driving system. On January 23, 2026, Phase 2 of the Zijin’s Julong Copper Mine project was officially completed and put into production. Based on the existing mining and processing scale of 150,000 t/d, an additional production scale of 200,000 t/d will be newly added to Julong Copper Mine, resulting in an overall production scale of 350,000 t/d.
At another major Zijin operation, the namesake Zijinshan gold mine in Shanghang County, Longyan, Fujian Province, the electric fleet has also been growing. By September 2024, electric vehicles accounted for 45% of Zijinshan’s fleet, all of which support both static charging and battery swapping. The battery swap station, built by Zijin Mining and State Grid Corporation of China and launched in September 2023, can service a truck in just 8 minutes and has an annual battery charging capacity of 12 million kWh. The fleet includes the new XCMG EX80 truck, on which EACON has also deployed its autonomous driving system.
But ultimately, Zijin Mining is looking to have its own in-house captive electric mining trucks. For the problem of slow recharging speed of electric vehicles, Fujian Longking, a company in which Zijin is the controlling shareholder, (recently increased from 25% to 33.76%) tailored a battery box and side battery swap system plan for the Xinjiang Zijin Zinc mine.
The capacity of each battery box is as high as 770 kWh, representing Zijin says the largest capacity of side swapping battery technology globally, with a swap time of only four minutes. Leveraging these advantages, Xinjiang Zijin Zinc restructured the roles of electric and diesel trucks to optimise their use within the remaining lifespan of diesel trucks, assigning the electric mining trucks to steeper sections at the bottom of the mine and diesel trucks to gentler slopes in the upper areas. “This adjustment gives full play to the best performance of different power vehicles, reducing diesel consumption at the mining site from 42,000 t in the previous reporting period to 34,000 t.”
This relationship with Fujian Longking has recently deepened, with Zijin working closely with the company for the development of next generation battery trucks for its own use, not just in China but globally. Xie Xionghui, a Vice President of Zijin Mining is also the Chairman of Longking.
In December 2025 the first all electric mining truck developed by Zijin and Longking rolled off the Longking production line in Longyan, Fujian Province – the 140 class LK220E. This was it says after only nine months of development.
Longking states: “The mines of Zijin Mining are mostly located in remote areas at high altitudes, and adverse conditions such as large day and night temperature difference, high cold temperature, and high temperature have brought severe tests to the stable operation of mine equipment. The pain points of difficult operation, large load demand, and high energy consumption have become key bottlenecks limiting the efficient and green development of the mining industry.”
It adds that its R&D team has gone through several rounds of research and technical arguments, with ‘stable power, improved energy efficiency, and strong safety’ as the main goals. “By customising a pure electric special drive bridge with high carrying capacity and large tonnage, it greatly improves energy recovery efficiency, achieves the precise adaptation of power output and high endurance capacity under large heavy duty work conditions, and improves the transportation efficiency of mines.” Longking has developed a two-bridge independent central distributed drive system, enabling flexible torque distribution and adaptation to mine conditions.
The core parts of the entire vehicle are made of cold, abrasion and vibration resistant high strength materials, which translate to good shock resistance in low temperature environments. The steering and braking system combine with dual safety redundancy to significantly reduce the risk of failure; The battery pack protection level reaches IP68, which can effectively guarantee the safe and stable operation of the vehicle through dozens of rigorous tests such as soaking in water, fire, simulated collision, extrusion, and thermal diffusion.
Its adds that the LK220E can achieve seamless docking with Zijin’s intelligent mine ecosystem, “marking a new stage in the R&D and industrialisation process of Longking in the field of new energy mining equipment.” At present, Longking on key technologies such as high-capacity power battery system integration, high-power drive control, and cloud platform computing power. “By leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as big data analysis, AI-driven decision-making, and simulation design, we can optimise core strategies like vehicle scheduling, energy consumption management, and intelligent maintenance, accelerate the development and mass production of next-generation fully electric mining dump trucks, and build a differentiated, high-end, and intelligent product matrix.
The statement pointed out that as a world=leading multinational mining giant, Zijin Mining has more than 30 large-scale mines at home and abroad and in order to accelerate the construction of green and smart mines, and at the same time solve the problem of the long-term monopoly of imported brands in the high-end mining truck market, Zijin Mining has clearly put forward the goal of building “a new energy independent equipment system” and uses its more than 30 mining scenarios around the world as innovation test fields so that products can continue to be tempered and iteratively matured in real and complex working conditions.
Longking: “Relying on the rich scene support provided by Zijin and the equipment R&D and manufacturing experience accumulated by Longking for decades, the company’s R&D and industrialisation of pure electric mining trucks has obtained unique fertile ground and development advantages.”
Most significantly, Zijin’s Julong Copper Mine and Longking have recently signed a number of electric mining truck procurement contracts. Longking states: “The Julong mining area is located in a high-altitude and alpine area, with a working altitude of 5,300 metres, which will fully and comprehensively verify the product performance. With an average annual operation of 50,000 kilometres, compared with traditional fuel mining trucks, each model can reduce carbon emissions by more than 120 t per year, and the cost per tonne-kilometre can be reduced by more than 30%, bringing significant environmental benefits and economic returns to mines, and filling the gap in Julong large-tonnage pure electric mining dump truck products.”
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