Mining Services and Technology [Engineering and Mining Journal]

Expertise built on demanding experience

Due to the labor constraints of Australia, its mining industry has been a world leader in the development and innovation of services and technology that increase efficiency, safety and automation. In adapting to some of the world's most remote and harsh operating environments, the Australian mining industry has become highly innovative, productive and efficient. Its mining technology is world leading and its mining services are an increasingly significant export.

Outwardly focused, around 50% of Australian companies in this sector are engaged in international business. Many mining companies see the existence of this hub of services as being one of Australia's key competitive advantages and one that allows Australian based mining houses to be developing projects around the globe.

Mark Warren, director of Perth-based consultancy Optiro that spun off of Snowden Consulting a few years ago, is adamant about Australia's superiority on the international mining scene. "We have seen the United States lose their domination in mining. In my view, when it comes to technology, the U.S. no longer is a dominant force. I think people would see Australia as a far more advanced place in terms of mining. As a consequence, services companies are becoming far more internationalized," he said.

Perth is perhaps the greatest of Australia mining services hubs and Campbell Baird, managing director of Focus Minerals, sees this as one of the city's best features for mining companies. "The competitive advantage of Perth is that the Western Australian mining entrepreneur is able to source consultancy services of all things; from capital raising, bank finance, technical services, engineering design right down to suppliers. You can drive 20 minutes in any direction and put together a mine anywhere in the world with the expertise that you meet. This whole industry has coalesced here in Perth and that skill set is then able to eject people off into the wider world," he said.

"We are renowned for our services and our expertise and we have built a community that is truly supportive of the resources sector. The main centers for growth in the world economy are Asia and India and our synergies with these regions are so strong that I think it provides tor a truly optimistic future," said Anne Nolan, who was until recently director general for Western Australia'sDepartment of State Development.

"If you take West Perth's mining service industry it's really the Silicon Valley of mining," said Neil Warburton, managing director of leading regional contractor Barminco. "We have some of the best brains in mining in the world. That's why, as Australian miners go into new markets, they always come back to use the consultants and contractors that are based here. We also have a very hands-on approach that is greatly appreciated by partners around the world."

On the east coast, Brisbane rivals Perth as a technology hub. The Queensland government is active in promoting the state as a mining technology hub. In 2008-09 mining equipment, technology and services export sales grew to A$2.8 billion, supporting 9,450 workers.

Queensland is home to Australia'sSustainable Mineral Institute and the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies, Australia's largest integrated research and development precinct for the resources and associated advanced technology industries. CRC Mining, part of Australia'sCooperative Research Centre initiative, aids in the commercialization of promising technology. Queensland is also able to leverage off the presence of University of Queensland, one of the country's premier research institutions. "Boasting a collection of world-class R&D facilities and a range of mining technology providers, Queensland is rapidly becoming the Silicon Valley of mining, technology and services for the Asia-Pacific Region," said John McGagh, head of innovation at Rio Tinto.

Such government support has been instrumental in getting some of Queensland's most innovative mining technology companies off the ground. "We have had very good support from the Queensland government. We are considered one of Queensland's shining stars in the mining technology sector and have received marketing development support to expose our capabilities to the world market," said Dr. David Noon, chief commercial officer at GroundProbe, the company behind the Slope Stability Radar and Work Area Monitoring mine safety systems.

Peter Wade was about to retire in 1999, when he had the occasion to join Mineral Resources, embarking on a journey that recently brought the company into the very exclusive club of the ASX 200. Mineral Resources initially developed three separate mining services businesses - CSI, PIHA and PMI - before it started to process and export iron ore and manganese. PIHA is now the largest manufacturer of polyethylene pipe fittings in Australia, and Crushing Services International is the country's largest specialist contract crushing company. "Mineral Resources is a combined business with the mining services on one hand, which is the core business of the company, and the manganese and iron ore business on the other hand. Our strength is that we are able to operate much smaller tenements than any other mining company, since we own and operate all of our crushing and processing equipment," Wade said.

This business model allows Mineral Resources to utilize their services skills in order to add value to the commodity side of the business, and exemplifies the resourcefulness of Australian services companies.

An Innovation Playground

At his office on the banks of the Brisbane River, John McGagh, head of innovation at Rio Tinto turns the pages of the tome on his desktop. It is a well-worn volume, within which annotated woodcut prints of smelters, water mills, hoists and pulleys and winches sit beside descriptions of mining practices from the 16th Century. The De Re Metallica, Latin for On the Nature of Metals, would remain the authoritative text on mining 180 years after the books original publication. Many senior executives at Rio Tinto, according to McGagh, keep a copy of Georg Bauer's seminal work in their offices: it depicts the superlative European mining practices of the past. Today though, in Australia, Rio Tinto is engaged in creating the mine of the future, "I must ask, what can't we do today that if we could do tomorrow would fundamentally change the business?" asked McGagh.

Though innovation is ubiquitous amongst forward-looking mining companies, Rio Tinto has interpreted the notion of innovation in a completely novel form through its Mine of The Future concept. "In 2006, the Rio Tinto board said it should be possible to develop step-change technologies not across a wide spectrum, but in specific fields that you can leverage, keep internal to the business and its partners, and generate a superior return on investment," said McGagh.

By early 2008, Rio Tinto had unveiled their Mine of The Future concept, focused around the company's Pilbara operations. The program set out to advance next generation mining technologies that would result in greater efficiency and safety, reduced environmental footprint, lower production costs and improved conditions for workers.

Towards the end of 2008, Rio Tinto commissioned the A Pit test mine, which has since showcased a number of foundation technologies: the Rio Tinto autonomous drill rig platform, the Komatsu FrontRunner autonomous haul truck system-which employs artificial intelligence to learn the layout of a mine, recognize other vehicles and obstacles, and establish the most efficient route to ferry loads from the loading face to the dump-and semi-autonomous smart explosive loading have all been rolled out. In 2010, Rio Tinto expanded its Mine of the Future'" program to develop new equipment and systems for deep underground mines. Aker Wirth and Atlas Copco will individually work with Rio Tinto to develop two new tunneling concepts and Herrenknecht will work with the Group on the development of a new shaft-boring machine.

Integral to the Mine of the Future concept is the Remote Operations Centre. As the industry moves toward greater automation, employees are able to remotely operate and supervise automated production drills, loaders and haul trucks in the Pilbara from the operations center in Perth.

From the outside, Mine of the Future may appear an embodiment of the idea of an Australian innovation playground; however the trajectory of ideas through the mine is complex. Innovations must have a practical bent, and outcomes and risk are meticulously assessed. "Of every hundred ideas that come into the system, less than two will make it to pilot plant. At this next stage, I take investment proposals to London, which I expect to be judged with the same amount of rigor as anything else, and they decide whether or not they are worth taking. I have a group dedicated to killing off bad ideas quickly, because you do not want dead ducks to run on," said McGagh.

Though the innovations developed by Rio Tinto in Australia will eventually be rolled out globally, a convergence of factors that McGagh describes as a perfect storm formed the ideal climate for investment in Mine of The Future in 2006 in Australia. "Judging from history, labor shortages in this world, which exist in Australia today, will spur on technological investment. This is a country with a good education system that has maintained its mining and technology schools. It also has lots of good mining companies and in order to carry out this kind of investment you have gotto have scale."

Rio Tinto works with a host of academic institutions to develop its technology, including the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney, Imperial College London, Curtin University in Western Australia and University of Queensland through the Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Center in Brisbane. McGagh also cites the emergence of new technology networks able to temper the tyranny of distance in precipitating new demand for remote technology in mining.

Innovation and the Environment

The connection between the mining industry and flatback turtles may not be an obvious one, yet it shows how innovation in the mining sector can help protect the environment, Miners are frequently criticized for the impact their activity has on the nearby fauna and flora, but innovative companies can also come up with fantastic ideas to protect the environment from harmful side effects. Paul Sowerby, sales and marketing director at Allight Sykes, is confident that the mining industry will place greater emphasis on environmental protection in the near future.

Allight Sykes manufactures lightning solutions for the mining industry, and has progressively added power, air and de-watering solutions to its offering, maintaining innovation as the company's driving force. When it heard the lightning system of Chevron's Gorgon gas project on Barrow Island was devastating the population of flatback turtles, they rapidly developed a solution that would satisfy the conservationists and preserve the turtles, without being detrimental to the operation. "We took a sodium vapor lamp, which is used in coal mining, and provides a much softer, yellow light, designed to cut through the coal blanket. We re-engineered our urban lighting tower, and fitted it with this new sodium vapor lamp. It was accredited by Barrow Island's conservationists, and became the 'turtle tower', the only lighting tower accredited for use on Barrow Island," said Sowerby.

Allight Sykes' R&D team can also be credited for the design of a spillage containment tray, that is fitted as standard on the lightning towers, and Sowerby lists greater environmental awareness as a key element of competitivity for companies in his line of business.

If the carbon tax functions according to the government's intentions, the coming years should herald increased investment in cleancoal technologies and in particular, in carbon capture and storage (CCS). One aspect of clean coal, however, that is often neglected in such environmental initiatives is the re-mining of tailings and the rehabilitation of mine sites.

"Not a lot of emphasis was ever put on tailings - it is a by-product, which you can put in the ground. It has always been considered the rubbish end of the coal chain," said Ross Garling, managing director at Superior Coal.

Set up in 2004, Superior Coal has worked on tailings management solutions for Xstrata, Vale, Rio Tinto, BMA and Anglo American among other players. "Historically, tailings deposits and reject dumps were contained and then forgotten about," said Garling.

This resulted in significant long-term rehabilitation challenges. In processing coal recovered from tailings deposits and reject dumps, Superior Coal are able to both produce a saleable product and reduce waste: extending the output of a mine while reducing its environmental impact. In addition to the overall sustainability of the operation, independent research has shown that almost 80% less CO2 emissions are generated in recovering a ton of coal from tailings, compared to traditional mining methods.

The benefits that Superior Coal is able to offer are not solely environmental, working closely with their clients, the company is able to elicit greater yield from coal mines. "It is cost-effective to recover tailings, and is in the mine's interest. What we do is win-win: it is just a case of getting across cultural misconceptions," said Garling.

Reducing energy consumption is another factor that not only protects emissions, but can also significantly enhance a project's profitability. There is, therefore, a large appetite in Australia for any technological investments that can meet these goals.

ThyssenKrupp'sPolysius subsidiary has been in Australia for about two decades. The company specialize in high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR) and command a 65% market share globally. "HPGR technology is at the tip of the evolution of energy efficient grinding equipment. As energy consumption and carbon tax are becoming more and more into focus, we are quite well positioned with our HPGR technology, because it allows users to save energy compared to conventional crushing and grinding equipment. It is more efficient, and it improves operating costs significantly," said Stephan Kirsch, managing director of Polysius Australia.

Polysius' Australian operations used to be run from an office in Melbourne. However, as Perth is Australia's' center of gravity for the mining industry, and the proximity to its clients is paramount, it was decided in 2006 to relocate the business to Perth and construct a service center hub for their operations. The service center was completed in 2009 and includes full workshop facilities, laboratory and pilot equipment for R&D.

It is the thirst for best available technology that makes their investment in Australia viable. "In terms of mining/processing technology Australia requires very high standards. HPGR technology plays its role in this regard. With our service center and workshop we are well positioned in this market environment," Kirsch said.

Bridging the Corporate and the Collegiate

In September 1930, American Julius Kruttschnitt was appointed as general manager of Mount Isa Mines in Queensland. 'To my consternation I found on my arrival a condition bordering on bankruptcy, with creditors being importuned to await a none-toocertain influx of capital,' Kruttshnitt wrote.

By July of the next year, the mine and smelters were producing their first lead bullion; Mount Isa Mines went on to become one of the most productive single mines in world history.

The Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre (JKMRC) at University of Queensland was developed in the late 1960s with the intention of having universities relocate their work from laboratories into the mines. By the mid-1980s, research had become more applied, leading to conflicts between researchers and miners. As a solution, JKTech was established in 1986 as a commercial arm of the JKMRC.

JKTech's main business is in developing new software to advance the mining industry, however the company also provides support, training and consultancy to Australia's miners.

"Our researchers are about five years ahead of the industry. We take risks, usually in partnerships, in areas that the mining industry has not picked up on. The most senior minds in mineral extraction meet with researchers every six months. The researchers present their recent work and are given the opportunity to respond to firms' problems," said Dr. Dan Alexander, CEO of JKTech.

Recently, for example, JKTech has been giving floatation seminars in response to the widespread problem of high-energy costs for miners facing harder and deeper ores.

JKTech also commercializes technology for a range of mining applications. "A good example of a successful commercialization was the Mineral Liberation Analyzer, a scanning electron microscope that took images of the rocks and the particles beneath and determined how to break and separate those. Almost every mining company now uses the technology, provided by Philips, our partner for the project," said Alexander.

Going forward a major area of focus for JKTech will be training. "We are looking at setting up programs to take young professionals to higher skill levels, which is particularly important today when there is generally not enough on-site experience. We are being asked to set up an international centre of excellence for mining in different hubs around the world, and emerging mining nations. China, Mongolia, India, Peru and Colombia are asking us to train their professionals in sustainable minerals practices, reflecting the fact that Australians are amongst world leaders in such issues," said Alexander.

Scanalyse was born from in 2005, a collaboration between the American aluminum giant Alcoa and Curtin University, in an attempt to transfer a new laser scanning technology into the mining industry. "Scanalyse is a really good and unusual story of a university working together with the mining industry to solve a problem that companies were having," said Scanalyse CEO, Peter Clarke.

The team of researchers successfully developed a solution that would allow miners to make the grinding process more efficient by gathering substantial information about what is happening inside the mills and the crushers. "If you don't use MillMapper, you have to physically go inside the mill and take about 10 measurements. We place our scanner inside the mill and get millions of different data points. We allow (our customers) to save money, to get more product through the mill, and to avoid the penalty of a catastrophic failure. There is also a safety aspect to MillMapper, as people don't have to go into the mill anymore," said Clarke.

A winner of the Inventor of the Year award in 2007, Scanalyse emphasizes innovation as its key strength, and is addressing new issues. MillMapper could be used to maximize the energy use for mineral production.

Founded in 1981 in Adelaide, Scantech, who provide process control solutions for bulk materials and service some of the industry's biggest players, grew on the back of the company's successful commercialization of scientific instrumentation developed by the University of Queensland and CSIRO.

Scantech brought the Coalscan range of real time-coal analyzers to the industry and have since dedicated their in-house research and development to refining the equipment and diversifying its applications in the areas of concrete and mineral analysis.

Scantech's success can, in part, be attributed to the patented non-contact system, applied to the company's major elemental analyzers, the Coalscan 9500X and Geoscan. "We've removed all the maintenance requirements that impact on the plant. That's given us a huge advantage," said David Lindeberg, managing director of Scantech.

Every machine that Scantech produces is fitted with a computer and IP address to enable remote after-sales support and eradicate the need for conveyor downtime. "The customers use the equipment as an input to their control system. In a lot of cases the customers already have a control system with a control philosophy. Instead of manually collecting information by taking samples and having them analyzed, they put in an analyzer that makes the process easier to monitor because it provides continuous information. The benefit of the technology is really in providing real-time information," said Henry Kurth, Scantech's sales and marketing manager.

Another advantage of the Scantech system is the company is able to provide assurances of the machines benefits to prospective customers before they make a purchase. "A proposal starts with the customer sending us samples and our marketing starts by giving customers a technical report, saying this is what our machine can offer. At that point we also give them guarantees, so they have an insurance policy even before they buy it," Lindeburg said.

Transmin is another Australian company that places a strong emphasis on the incorporation of innovation. The company is a leader in engineered solutions for bulk materials which has been serving the Western Australian gold mining sector since 1987. According to Ross Nunn, managing director at Transmin, it is the close relationship with its clients that has led to many of the company's innovations. "A huge amount of our work is, in fact, R&D. We have managed to be innovative by trying to customize our products to suit clients' specific needs, and our focus has been on these customized products. From this work, we have developed completely new products like the rock breaker booms and the low profile feeder and we have developed innovation in the area of automation with CSIRO, Newcrest, Rio Tinto and other big players."

From its Western Australian roots, Transmin are now increasingly focusing on expanding overseas and diversifying the commodities that they serve. The company subcontracts all of its manufacturing and machining and instead uses their focus on innovation as a competitive edge.

"As we go forward, we want people to identify Transmin as a producer of intellectual property. Our target markets are Brazil and various African countries. In the last five or six years, we have become very iron ore focused, and that should last for a long time. When we started, the company was focused on gold, but iron ore suits our growth strategy as it involves bigger players and equipment," said Nunn.

Safe and Efficient Mining

Australia is widely regarded as having one of the strongest safety cultures in the international mining industry. On Australian mine sites the inductions, training, and specs for personal protective equipment are probably the strictest in the world.

MineARC Systems is a company that started at the turn of the millennium building scrubbers, and rapidly expanded into the construction of emergency refuge chambers for the mining industry. The 2006 Sago mine disaster, during which 12 people lost their lives, prompted it to develop a chamber that would fit in the specific requirements of a coal mine and that would be built to U.S. standards.

MineARC's managing director Geoff Whitaker remembers the genesis of their CoalSafe chamber. "Since Sago in 2006, and other mining accidents, refuge chambers have become increasingly important and there has been a growing focus from governments for the whole range of mine safety standards. Our hard rock business had been quite successful worldwide when in 2006 we started developing CoalSafe. As it was to be used in an explosive atmosphere, we couldn't use electricity to run refrigeration. We developed an air conditioning scrubbing system that is powerless and uses no electricity whatsoever."

The only chamber on the market to benefit from this innovative design, the CoalSafe technology has received its certification for the Chinese market, where the coal industry is made up of a tremendous, particularly vulnerable 6 million people.

Barminco is one of the leading underground contractors in Australia, they command around 35% of the domestic market for underground contracting and, as open pit operations are increasingly going underground and underground operations are going deeper, they see a great deal of growth opportunity for the future.

Along with its record for increasing productivity at client operations, the company's Managing Director, Neil Warburton, feels it is the emphasis on safety that differentiates its operations. "Our safety performance is regarded as the best in the industry. When compared with both other contractors and owner-operated mines our safety is second to none. We pride ourselves on that and instigate a lot of safety improvement programs within the industry right down to the coal face. We're driven from the bottom up in this regard, so that the guys working underground have an integral part in our safety policies."

Like so many of Australia's successful service companies, that have cut their teeth in one of the world's most demanding markets. Barminco are now putting a focus on taking their operations overseas. "It began from our Australian based international clients asking us to come over. In the early 2000s, we started going over to projects in South Africa and other parts of the world. We were able to bring our mechanized mining methods to West Africa and replicate our safety and productivity performance. We are very aware of the need to instill our company's values throughout our operations wherever in the world they are. We absolutely cannot compromise our safety and productivity performance," said Warburton. But safety culture extends far beyond the mine sites, back into the R&D laboratories of a number of dedicated Australian mining technology companies. While in other jurisdictions, safety best practice is sometimes regarded as an adherence to time-tested methods, Australian miners are quick to trial new technologies and adapt them into their operations systems. Anglo American in Australia, for example, is an early adopter of the CRC backed SmartCap, a device that provides real time measurements of a vehicle operators brain waves to determine fatigue levels. Even before it has undergone full commercialization, the SmartCap is now featured on almost all of Anglo American's mine sites globally.

Arguably the two most fundamental drivers for innovation in mining; improvements in mine safety and improvements to process efficiency, are inextricably linked. At the most basic level, safety improvements reduce mine downtime and worker absence through injury; efficiency improvements mean less fatigued workers and processes that are simpler to manage. Australian OHS specialist Industrea, for example, sells in-seam methane gas drainage systems, flameproof long-wall removing equipment and personnel carriers, and open-cut mine collision avoidance systems extensively into the domestic market, and, increasingly, overseas. "In Australia, our clients buy our products to improve safety and receive productivity gains, while in China, they buy them to improve productivity and receive safety gains. It is very easy to sell internationally the products and methods that make mining in Australia world-beating," said Robin Levison CEO at Industrea.

When Groundprobe developed their game changing Slope Stability Radar (SSR), the technology was originally intended to improve the safety of open-pit operations. Before the introduction of the SSR, the conventional way of determining slope stability was survey methods. Surveys would measure the movements of selected prisms installed on mine walls. Such surveys might have been conducted once a day, once a week, or once every couple of weeks. The SSR enables the movement of an entire wall to be monitored in real time with updates on slope stability every minute. By improving the safety of open cut mines, the SSR enabled mines to go deeper with steeper walls. "Risk equals probability multiplied by consequences. As you go deeper and steeper, the probability is higher, but with monitoring the consequence is reduced. Overall, [with the SSR] the risk is on-par or lowered, but the profitability of an operation is significantly higher because of deeper pits and steeper walls," said David Noon, chief commercial officer at GroundProbe.

Groundprobe SSR systems is now in 19 countries around the world and, according to Noon, the company has about 75% of market share in the global slope stability radar systems market. While Australia is traditionally an early adopter of new safety technology, some jurisdictions like to see a technology being used widely before they use it. "There is a strong education component in taking a product that is technologically focused into the global market. We overcame that by focusing on global mining companies that had safety and technology innovation as their core values. We were able to leverage from these early adopters to become the best practice in the main market," said Noon.

In 2011, Groundprobe will release the Work Area Monitor (WAM). While the SSR monitors the entire wall slopes of a mine to determine the overall safety of its operation, the WAM uses similar technology to specifically protect the actual operators: the drillers, blast crews and shovel operators that frequently work up against the mine face. The WAM is a much simpler system and provides an alarm directly to the operator if a rock movement is detected. "I think WAM will exceed SSR in terms of numbers and value to the mining industry. Right now, there are people working up against rock faces and there is no monitoring at all. The WAM is a tool they can have, which is like their personal protective equipment: their hard-hat, their boots, and their WAM when they're working close to any wall," said Noon.

Another company that has taken a potential mining danger out of the mine site is Immersive Technologies. Mine sites across the world now utilize some of the largest, most sophisticated most expensive and potentially dangerous equipment known to any sector. Given the high turnover of employees being experienced across Australia as the work force constraints bite, training new operators is a constant concern. Immersive have developed equipment simulators, in partnership with the OEMs, to filter and then train the operators required to the highest skill level.

The simulator provides a unique environment that is cost effective, safe and insulated from the influence of other existing operators. Selected operational and emergency scenarios can be rehearsed repeatedly to improve operators' skills. Every action that is made on the simulator is recorded on the computer for detailed reporting and review. This gives senior management a very clear picture of what its workforce is going to deliver and where it needs to improve to drive the safety improvements and reduce reactive maintenance costs.

"Our first commercial sale of the simulator was in Indonesia. We then achieved sales in South Africa, Canada, the United States and then Australia. Although our first customers were not from Australia, we now have a very large customer base here. We really had to prove ourselves overseas. Currently, Australia represents around 25% of our sales revenue and the rest is spread over 30 countries around the world. Over the years, we have had great support from Austrade in reaching those overseas markets," said Peter Salfinger, managing director of Immersive Technologies.

Australian Mining Software

Australian designed and developed software has set the benchmark for the mining industry worldwide. Australian mining software is innovative, flexible and user-friendly, and extensively used by companies the world over. At least 60% of the world's mines are now operating with Australian-made and designed software.

Andrew Jesset, CEO of MineWare, a Queensland-based provider of dragline and shovel monitoring systems for the surface mining industry who won the Emerging Export Award at the 2010 Premier of Queensland's Export Awards, feels Australia's key differentiator as a mining nation lies in its provision of mining technology services. "In Australia, I think we want to be known more for our export of mining technologies rather than our resources that come out of the ground. To me that is where our competitive advantage lies as a county. We have this nucleus of innovation," said Jesset. "Wherever you go there is a certain amount of kudos and respect that you receive for being an Australian technology provider," said Adam Forsyth, CEO of APS Mining, which provides industry leading machine management solutions for mining applications including Machine Guidance, Condition Monitoring, Fleet Management and Information Management services. In addition to the prestige associated with being a successful Australian mining technology company, APS Mining has leveraged its experience of operating in regional Queensland to ensure the applicability of its products overseas. "One advantage that is specific to South-East Asia is that being based in Queensland we come from one of the only strong mining regions in the world that shares similar weather patterns, such as the recent floods that we have experience dealing with," said Forsyth.

"Mining technology is Australia's only world's best-practice industry," said Graeme Tudor, managing director of Micromine, a leading innovator in this field. He feels that the importance of this field should not be underestimated. "It is a globally significant business. Depending on what parameters you use. mining technology is a US$7 billion per year industry."

Tudor's company has now expanded into a number of international markets and feels that the Australian brand in software is so strong that it opens a lot of doors for the company. "We use the Australian roots of the company in new markets as everyone recognizes the brand of Australian made technology. Australia has the reputation of being the centre of mining technology in the software industry because it is the only place doing R&D. However, many good companies have been acquired by overseas entities."

Gemcom is an amalgam of four different companies that are headquartered in Vancouver and, since 2007, has been privately owned by three private equity firms. One of the companies that formed the amalgamation was started in Perth in the early eighties and was initially developed by a university engineer that saw the need for mining software and started to adapt software from the civil engineering industry.

Andrew Pyne, managing director, also sees Australia as a very competitive market. "All of our competitors are here. Because it is quite a mature market, customers tend to buy technology primarily based on what they've already used and what they know. We don't do a lot of technical shoot-outs here anymore as people tend to know what the technology can do. These days someone will buy the product because of the brand and because they are comfortable with our products. Largely the market has decided what product it will use, regardless of whether it is the best product or not."

"It is quite a mature market in terms of people's knowledge of the available service offerings. In certain developing markets some companies are not aware of the full suite of competitor products. But this does limit our growth potential, whilst we have phenomenal growth here. You would think that it is mature, but our Canadian colleagues are surprised that we are able to grow as much as we are," said Rebecca Kellum, account director at Gemcom.

Computer technology has paved the way for tremendous improvements in mine efficiency, leading to increased revenue for mining companies. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) emulates real world operations in order to analyze and improve them. TSG Consulting uses simulation modeling in the early stages of a mine development, in order to assess the infrastructure design. Their early intervention, in a triangular arrangement with the mining companies and the engineers, can have a significant impact. Rod Houston, TSG's recently appointed executive general manager, insists on the huge return on investment for his clients. "If you spend a million with us, you can save $100 million. We can offer our clients, before they build anything, the ability to quantify the risk and to assess whether there is a better way to build the infrastructure that reduces the risk. We help them to understand the whole logistical chain and the interaction of those systems."

DES allows clients to make more informed decisions; for example, it can help an operator decide to defer the purchase of a A$50 million iron ore train for six months, therefore allowing an important cost saving.

The company's experience of big-scale projects, through their work with BHP and Rio Tinto, gives them an unrivalled expertise that is confirmed by a 90% market share in Western Australia.

"TSG benefits from the Pilbara experience, since Rio Tinto and BHP's Pilbara operations are held in high regard internationally. Every major expansion decision that BHP and Rio have made in the past few years have been tested in our models," said Michael Dallimore, director.