Austmine 2019 has announced its award winners at the Industry Leaders’ Dinner and Awards in Brisbane this week.
The event welcomed over 750 attendees who came together to celebrate the METS and mining companies’ export and innovation success.
Metallurgical Systems took home the Craig Senger excellence in export award, with the judges remarking that the tech company is innovative and pioneering, with an impressive export strategy and overwhelming success in export markets.
PanAust received the Austmine miners innovation award for its diesel fuel backloading system. The company’s commercial team designed and built 18 fuel tanks to backload diesel fuel from a local vendor to its Phu Kham copper-gold operation in Laos.
The backloading of diesel fuel has removed eight to 10 contractor fuel tankers from the mine site route on a daily basis and ensures 100 per cent utilisation of the associated trucks.
Judges selected PanAust’s system as an example of miner conceived and driven innovation which delivered significant environmental, cost and efficiency benefits to the operation.
The Austmine METS innovation award was given to Orica for the WebGen 100 wireless electronic blasting system – the world’s first wireless through earth electronic blasting system.
The device demonstrated an ability to reduce the exposure of people in higher risk environments, deliver significant productivity gains and increase reliability with less misfires, production delays and eliminating the need to re-drill.
Steve Durkin, the managing director of Safescape, received the Austmine champion of innovation award, with his passion for mining playing a key role in the development of the company’s Laddertube.
The judges congratulated Durkin, commenting that he continually challenged the status quo, focusing on innovative inventions that improve safety in the METS industry.
Austmine presented the awards in conjunction with its 2019 Mining Innovation Conference & Exhibition.