‘Privatising mining not enough for efficiency’

Privatisation alone is not key to efficient mining, feels Simon Askey-Doran, of Australian mining technology consultant Runge Pincock Minarco (RPM).

Simon who looks after India operations of the company; feels large number of Indian miners – both in private and public sector – are yet to pay adequate attention to important aspects of mine planning and scheduling, leading to inefficiencies.

He was in the city in connection with the recently concluded International Mining and Machinery Exhibition (IMME).

The scene is not very impressive in iron ore sector. Leaving aside some large capacity mines (operated by NMDC, Tata Steel, SAIL and others), the rest are too small and need “significant help” to improve mining practices.

In coal sector “some captive miners are using elements of good technology, like fleet management system and SAP. But hardly anyone had gone for end-to-end IT backed technology solutions,” he says.

Though avoided taking direct reference of the State-owned Coal India (CIL), contributing 82 per cent of the national coal production; Simon points out the unwelcome co-existence of latest and outdated technology in the commercial mining sector.

“There are some large flagship opencast projects that use latest mining gears. But in many others antiquated equipment are in operation, hindering productivity,” he says.

The issue is not merely about acquiring latest gears. But acquiring right gears and utilising them to the fullest potential, so as to maximise the productivity.

But does the environment offer much opportunity to consultants like RPM? Simon says the country opens opportunities like never before.

He bets on the recent government announcements asking State-owned mining companies like NMDC (iron ore) and CIL to double output in flat five years. And, to do that the companies need to adopt more efficient practices.

The opportunities are particularly vast in the coal sector that fuels over 70 per cent of the energy needs of the country.

“The processes that took CIL to 500 million tonne production (expected in 2014-15), will not be adequate to reach one billion tonne mark (targeted in five years),” he says adding that mining software technology has to play a role in this transition.

CIL on its part has also responded to the need. The company recently invited bids from consultants for modernising of its underground mines that produce a mere 36 mt coal annually. RPM is one of the bidders in the project.

“We are exploring the opportunity of an RnD project with CIL. The aim is to showcase how a process and technology driven mining can improve productivity from the same acrage,” he said.

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