The mining industry is making progress on a shift to cleaner, safer vehicles, as collaboration between the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) and original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) gains momentum.

Under the ICMM’s Innovation for Cleaner, Safer Vehicles (ICSV) initiative, the industry and OEMs are collaborating to understand what is needed to transform today’s fleet of mining vehicles into tomorrow’s new generation of vehicles.

“Safer, cleaner mining equipment is important for our people and the world. No one party can tackle this on their own though,” BHP CEO Mike Henry said this week.

The ambitions of the ICSV initiative are to introduce greenhouse gas emission-free surface mining vehicles by 2040, minimise the operational impact of diesel exhaust by 2025 and make vehicle collision avoidance technology available to mining companies by 2025.

Two years on from announcing these ambitions, eight new OEMs have joined the initiative taking the number of participating OEMs to 19.

ICMM members, representing about 30% of the global metals market with more than 650 assets, have undertaken assessments to establish a clearer view of the progress made at site level towards each ambition. These assessments indicate that ICMM members are generally at early stages of maturity in the journey, and show what progress will look like for each ambition.

The CEO Advisory Group, comprising the leaders of BHP, Anglo American, Gold Fields, Caterpillar, Komatsu and Sandvik, said that in its first two years, the ICSV had achieved the critical step of sending strong signals to OEMs and third-party technology providers on their requirements and on what was needed to accelerate development and adoption of technology across the industry.

“There is a critical need to advance work on cleaner, safer vehicles in mining, which will have important health and safety benefits and contribute towards the pressing need of decarbonising the mining industry. It is recognised that there are measures we can implement now, but other, more impactful, interventions are reliant on technology pathways that are still evolving. This will undoubtedly take time, but the industry’s collaboration with OEMs, through the ICMM, is critical as we look for these long-term, sustainable and integrated solutions,” said Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland.

The initiative is open to all OEMs to join.