Rio Tinto's mining goes futuristic at Pilbara

It is like one of those scenes out of a sci-fi movie.

From the control room of Anglo-Australian mining major Rio Tinto's operations centre in Perth, one can watch live operations in 13 different iron ore mines located in Pilbara area, some 1,500 km away.

Two giant dashboards at the Iron Ore Operations Centre play out the real time activities at the mines, three ports and the 1,400-km rail network that the company owns.

The centralised control room provides a view across the production system from mining pits to loading of trucks, transportation to stockyards, rail and loading of ships at ports, some 400 km from the mines.

Data such as how much ore is being produced, how much being stocked, blended and moved out are available real time at the operations centre, located outside Perth domestic airport. Also available are data relating to order-book, quality of iron ore and ships in queue at the ports, which helps in production planning.

“It's a first of its kind in the mining industry,” Mr Gavin B. Cohen, Manager at the Operations Centre, told a group of visiting Indian journalists.

“It allows controllers, schedulers and technical staff to work under one roof, enabling enhanced communication, increased efficiency and better decision making,” he adds.

There are about 338 employees manning Rio's operations remotely from Perth. The company has a staff strength of 10,500 and plans to add another 4,500 by 2015.

Using cameras, radios and microphones from their desks in the Operations Centre, the controllers from their desks talk to the staff on the mine site and monitor operations such as through the CCTVs installed at around 200 locations.

The operations centre is connected through optic fibre and satellite link with all mines and ports.

Expanding production

Rio Tinto is planning to make its mining more futuristic as it plans to expand production in the Pilbara region from the current 220 million tonnes per annum to 333 mtpa by 2015 entailing an investment of about $1 billion.

Soon, the company will even be sending driverless trucks into the mines and remote control collection of the ores. Select trials of such autonomous or remote-operated trucks were going on in Pilbara. These heavy haulage trucks are controlled with the help of embedded sensors.

Rio Tinto has even done the trial runs of driverless trains from its Pilbara mines to the ports of Dampier and Cape Lambert back in 2008. However, the company went slow on the project due to the economic slowdown and has plans to revive it again.

As Rio intensifies mining automation, Mr Cohen said the ‘mine-of-future' initiatives were unlikely to leave any job redundancies. While the technology investments could not be ascertained, Mr Cohen estimates that the company would save up to $100 million over a seven-year period.

(This correspondent's trip was sponsored by Rio Tinto .)

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