W
hile much of the focus
around autonomous haulage
has been on Komatsu’s and
Caterpillar’s eforts in the
Western Australian Pilbara, another truck
maker has been running its own trial in
Queensland.
For the past three years Hitachi has been
trialling three EH5000 trucks at Stanwell
Corporation’s Meandu mine near the Tarong
power station.
According to Stanwell Corporation’s
2015-16 annual report the three truck trial
assisted with rehabilitation work at Meandu
by moving almost 300,000 bank cubic metres
of earth.
he company said it was in discussions
with Hitachi to potentially extend the trial
for another two years to end in 2019.
Stanwell Corporation’s Jim Young said the
three trucks had been moving dirt well.
He said they had about 80 hectares of their
own to work on, essentially their own little
mine site.
Hitachi Construction Machinery
(Australia) general manager mining Eric
Green said the three trucks were at diferent
stages of testing.
“We’re looking to move to the next stage
very shortly with a commercial product
in operation at an actual operating mine,”
Green said.
“hat’s in the plans for 2019 or 2020.
“hen we’ll have a product we can operate
to the market.”
Green said the Hitachi autonomous trucks
were running a guidance system Hitachi had
developed itself.
He said the company would be looking
to the coal industry as a market for its
autonomous trucks.
“We have done a lot of work to be
compliant in coal applications,” Green said.
“here are some diferences between coal
and iron ore in terms of regulations.
“hat’s one thing we’ve been working with
various bodies on.”
However, Green has not ruled out bringingan autonomous haulage solution to the
Western Australian iron ore market either.
Hitachi has started to make inroads into
the iron ore truck haulage space and has ive
of its EH5000 trucks operating at Rio Tinto’s
West Angelas mine.
Prior to the Rio Tinto win it had been a
long time since a Hitachi truck had been
hauling at a WA mine. While the company
had a lot of success getting its large mining
excavators into the WA market, it had
struggled to sell trucks.
hat changed with the Rio Tinto job and
recently Hitachi won a deal to supply 24
trucks to Hancock Prospecting’s Roy Hill
iron ore mine.
In 2016 Hitachi opened a 104,000sq.m
facility in the southeastern Perth suburb of
Forrestdale. he facility hosts Hitachi’s parts,
remanufacturing, WA oices and equipment
assembly.
he parts store itself covers some
8000sq.m and holds about $35 million of
stock.Expanding automation
A couple of other options are emerging in the mine automation area. By Noel Dyson
10 AMM December 2017 http://www.miningmonthly.com
COVER STORY
A Komatsu 930E autonomous hauler
operating at a Rio Tinto mine in the
Western Australian Pilbara.