Lynas Rare Earths fourth-quarter revenue falls 13.3%
The world's largest producer of rare earths outside of China posted sales revenue of A$136.6 million for the quarter.
Labour costs were the key driver that led to major investments in mine automation in Western Australia, says Greg Lilleyman, Rio Tinto’s technology and innovation executive.
Lilleyman, who spoke to MINING.com last month at the CIM convention in Montreal, says the company was faced with too few miners able to work in remote Western Australia. It was also a time when iron ore demand was high.
In 2012 Rio Tinto invested US$500 million in autonomous trains. It also added fleets of autonomous trucks.
“We needed to very quickly develop the operation to capture the upside of the market from China” says Lilleyman.
“Labour costs were quite high. All of those factors coming together in one location meant that the investment case was ripe for the picking.”
One of Lilleyman’s key focus at the moment is big data to run predictive analytics, which should lessen unscheduled equipment maintenance.
“The equipment of today has many more sensors and data points coming through, real-time and online all the time,” says Lilleyman.
“You can still see residual life or you can see where there failures that are going to occur, and you can schedule in activities instead of in an unplanned fashion.”
7 Comments
James Bond
Greg is being politically correct. What he didnt want to say was that paying AUD$300k for a truck driver onsite in Australia is more expensive than paying US$25k almost anywhere else in the world.
merv
great way to rid your business of human error and the Aussie sick day.….get rid of the pesky humans.Roll on Autonomy.
Grant
Just another money hungry company that’s more worried about their share holders than giving the money that rightfully belongs to Australian workers, as the iron ore taken from Australian soil belongs to Australians and not some multi- billion dollar company with CEO’s sitting behind a desk with 7 figure incomes.
Grant
James Bond
The salary of an Aussie truck driver is around $90,00 to $110,000 no where near what you said. $300,000 that’s a joke, it’s never been even close to that as the highest wage as a truck operator I’ve ever had in the past 9 years is $130,000.
your wake up call
Hey, idiot, how many billions is enough profit, ?? Seriously. When you loose truck drivers you loose others services that cater for the mining industry, communities can’t flourish as incomes are affected, families are losing their homes!! Times are tough in mining but yeah “bring on autonomy” $20 says your a knob that sits in an office!!
brettles02
wonder how much Gregory gets in bonus points for this autonomous caper , will bet its more then the fabulous figure of $300,000
Think about it
Crying about truck drivers loosing their jobs with the advent of autonomous trucks is the same as people crying about clerks loosing their jobs when computers came around. I am pretty sure that none of you blame the computer companies as evil now. Every new technology creates more skilled jobs. Autonomous trucks for example create jobs for equipment manufacturers, engineers, technicians, controllers, and all the other support roles required for the technology to work and be maintained.
Also the logic that Australia owns the land and money should be distributed among all Australians instead of profiting a company is a illogical one in a capitalist economy. The mining companies pay their royalties to the countries they operate in, which in turn is passed on by the government to its citizens how they see fit.