Vedanta reveals innovative technology at Gamsberg mine
One of the world’s largest diversified resource companies has entered into a new partnership to embrace mining of the future at the largest Greenfields project in South Africa.
Vedanta Zinc International (VZI), a subsidiary of Vedanta Resources, has announced that has entered into a collaboration with GE South Africa and MineRp to bring a leading greenfields digitalisation initiative to its flagship Gamsberg Project.
The Smart Ore Movement system is built around the need to ensure that all available information about the state of a mine site, the quality of the ore, the conditions of processing plants and the value of the output product are “not only made available to the mine management team in real-time, but that the information is presented in such a way that allows for minute-by-minute decision making.”
The project, which is being undertaken in collaboration with GE South Africa, will see the implementation of this system throughout the development phase of the project, as opposed to waiting for Gamsberg to come online and then attempting to retrofit the systems.
“VZI places great emphasis on the concept of ‘Adapt and Thrive’ across all areas of our business. A core philosophy at Vedanta is to embrace new technologies and practices, and we welcome the opportunity to become part of the disruption revolution,” says Deshnee Naidoo, VZI CEO.
“As mining companies, we need to offer our employees, our communities and our investors a different future, and people-centric technology has the potential to be part of that process.
“Working smarter through technology and digitalisation is one of our 7 core pillars in Vedanta. We are acquiring best-in-class technology for our assets, and focusing on creating our own. Last year, the wider Group initiated a US$30 million investment fund for in-house R&D, supporting our wealth of knowledge and spirit of innovation with meaningful resources.”
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GE will take the strategic leadership role in the partnership and with its Predix platform for the industrial internet. This will form the integration layer for Smart Ore Movement and further initiatives such as Cyber Security, Asset Performance Management and Operations Performance Management solutions. GE will use the expertise gathered in other industries to provide seamless integration in a ‘one stop shop’ type of environment.
MineRP will be focussing on enabling real time decision making through visibility by providing immediate access to information in relevant context; and secondly through insight into conditions, relationships, and trends that are not otherwise apparent.
