Forbes Asia - June 2018

24 | FORBES ASIA JUNE 2018

also keeps an eye on artillerymen and military engi-

neers, with the use of explosives being the common link.

In Australia, women were banned from working under-

ground until 40 years ago when Britain’s Queen Eliza-

beth visited the deep workings of the Mount Charlotte

gold mine.

Today, Australia’s three biggest publicly traded iron ore

mining companies have women at (or close to) the top, led by

the chief executive of Fortescue Mining, Elizabeth Gaines, 54.

Like BHP and Rio Tinto, Fortescue is automating its opera-

tions, but largely through retroitting autonomous haulage

equipment to existing mines. (Of course, there’s also Austra-

lia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, the executive chairman of

closely held Hancock Prospecting.)

Koodaiderie and South Flank will be the next generation

of mines, and while both require inal board approval before

construction can start, perhaps early next year, that seems

to be a formality because of the need to develop new mines

to satisfy contractual sales obligations and the productivity

beneits from utilizing the latest technology.

Because what’s happening is not a single event but a series

of changes that will signiicantly reduce the manning in a

mine and require a workforce with more tech skills and less

in manually operating equipment, neither BHP nor Rio Tinto

will put numbers on overall cost savings or expected ei-

ciency gains.

But, for example, driverless trucks require less main-

tenance than those with heavy-footed drivers, computer-

controlled trains operate more eiciently and loading a train

is better done by computer than by a human. “One of the

challenges around the safety aspect is how much ore you put

on the rail, which means we tend to underload cars,” Jurgens

says. “We’ve introduced lasers and weightometers and ore

analyzers so we know the density of the ore, we know the

maximum weight we can put in the car, and we can extremely

accurately load our ore cars, which has given us [an extra] 2.4

tons per ore car.”

With trains routinely made up of 268 cars, that means

each trip to Port Hedland can now carry an extra 643 tons

of ore, which at the current price of around $65 a ton means

$41,795 in extra revenue. Over an average day, when 20 trains

make the 260-mile journey, a small technology-driven change

in loading becomes an extra $836,160—or roughly $300 mil-

lion a year.

QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG

FORBES ASIA

DIGITAL DIGS

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CEO Elizabeth Gaines of Fortescue is automating operations, largely by retrofitting haulage equipment to existing mines.