Nuts and bolts of mining innovation

With a strong focus on cutting costs in mining, many WA small businesses are developing ways to dig up resources smarter and cheaper.

More than 600 million tonnes of iron ore are dug out in Western Australia and then transported to port annually, resulting in an enormous amount of wear and tear on a range of very expensive capital equipment.

As a result, a lot of effort goes into minimising the necessity for maintenance and the downtime when it is needed.

For instance, the big miners use sacrificial wear plates to protect ore bins and train carriages against damage. The plates require regular replacement.

It’s a cumbersome task but one for which Belmont-based Davies Wear Plate Systems has created a simple solution, according to managing director Rod Houston, who claims it will cut downtime by 80 per cent.

Davies, which has its manufacturing facility in Esperance, is among a growing group of WA companies offering cost-saving ideas to the resources sector as the reduction in commodity prices continues to bite.

That ranges from technology startups such as Mineler, which is bringing the idea of the social network into the resources industry, to Minnovare, which has developed a timesaving drill rig aligner.

Trackem, which won the Department of Commerce’s 2015 WA Innovator of the Year award, uses the cloud to manage and track assets for mining projects, both in construction and in operation, including at Roy Hill.

Rock solid

Dr Houston said changing of wear plates was a labour-intensive task because most plates were bolted on with screws, which eventually rusted and required a blowtorch to remove.

He estimated about 95,000 square metres of plates would be changed annually in WA.

That would require more than 500,000 hours of work at a cost of $85 million.

Davies’ solution was a new sort of bolt that does not require nuts, Dr Houston told Business News.

However, Davies isn’t the only company targeting better wear plates as a way to reduce costs.

Ausdrill sold its DT Hiload business to Schlam Engineering earlier this year. DT Hiload has a specially designed haul truck with a bed it claims reduces downtime and wear.

Meanwhile, Alloy Steel International has the Arcoplate wear plate, which it claims outlasts other wear liners up to 10 times.

Mineral Resources hoped to save up to 15 per cent on mine to process plant costs by replacing truck trays with a newly developed carbon fibre exoskeleton.

Dr Houston plans to use his expertise in commercialisation built during his time at Orbital Engineering, where he served as managing director, to take the company’s product overseas.

Canada was the first target, with hard rock mining likely to benefit most from the product due to higher wear.

Inquiries were growing as pricing pressure encouraged the sector as a whole to reduce costs, he said.

A further strength for Davies is its cornerstone investor, Harold Clough, who owns a 25 per cent stake in the business through a family investment company.

Mr Clough is related to Davies’ founder, Brian Davies.

Pointing ahead

Minnovare was formed in 2012 to commercialise technology that helps align drill rigs before they commence work.

To do so manually requires, on average, between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours.

The company’s alignment technology reduces that to just 10 minutes, according to managing director Callum McCracken.

“What that means over the course of a drilling campaign … we can actually replace that downtime with productive drilling time and as a result we can improve the productivity of the entire drill campaign anywhere between 5 or 10 per cent,” Mr McCracken said.

DRILLING DOWN: Minnovare commercial director Michael Beilby (left) and Callum McCracken with the azimuth aligner. 

The Minnovare aligner has already been used overseas in London’s Crossrail project, and is primarily used in underground mines where GPS is unavailable.

Local private equity player Viburnum Funds also became involved in the company in April.

Looking forward, Minnovare will be working on data capture from the aligner as it expands internationally.