PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Major BHP will take delivery of the world’s first carbon neutral conveyor belt at its Spence copper mine, in Chile, as part of an exclusive pilot project with China’s Wuxi Boton.

The two companies jointly developed this pilot project, under which the conveyor belts were verified by SGS, a leading testing, inspection and certification company, as meeting the specification for the demonstration of carbon neutrality.

SGS awarded the world's first certificate of "Achievement of Carbon Neutrality for Steel Cord Rubber Conveyor Belt" to a batch of belts produced by Boton for BHP. The conveyor belts will be shipped to BHP’s Spence copper mine, where they will be used in the production and transportation of Spence mining products to customers around the world, including China.

The scope of the pilot project was for Wuxi Boton, as the incumbent contractor for BHP’s operations at both Minerals Australia and Minerals America, to select the conveyor belts to be ordered by BHP and identify how to offset the estimated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of those conveyor belts using high quality carbon offsets prior to delivery.

“Wuxi Boton have been a reliable partner to BHP for over eight years, supplying high quality conveyor belts to our assets in Australia and Chile. Both companies are committed to mitigating climate change in accordance with their respective climate targets and goals. This shared vision of a better world led Wuxi Boton, in December 2021, to extend the offer of an exclusive pilot to deliver a carbon neutral conveyor belt to BHP,” BHP’s group procurement officer, James Agar said.

“The partnership with Wuxi Boton has been invaluable in helping BHP verify the feasibility of using high-quality carbon offsets to GHG emissions  in our supply chain and grow the potential demand for supplying ‘traced’, ‘low carbon’, or ‘carbon neutral’ products amongst our suppliers,” he added.