The introduction of automation or robotics in mining activities will first require the buy-in of employees for it to be truly successful, and would require a gradual, transparent introduction process to prevent the alienation of miners at the coalface, Dundee Precious Metals information technology director Mark Gelsomini said on Wednesday.

He told delegates at the fourth Global Mining Technology Forum, in Johannesburg, that the introduction of automation should be managed through an engaged, participative process that included input from workers, who often felt threatened by the arrival of the technology, which had the potential to render certain positions redundant.

“When you introduce robotics and automation, you’re essentially introducing a culture change. You need to teach your workers not to shy away from it, but to embrace it,” he commented.

Mining automation in the South African mineral sector – an industry already fraught with labour issues – has long been a contentious topic, characterised by fears from labour and government that job losses will subsequently increase the country’s already fragile unemployment rate.

However, ContiTech Conveyor Belt Group belt monitoring head Dr Andreas Jung, whose German company provides automated conveyer technology in international mining markets, said he had seen few job losses as the result of automation.

“Not once have we had a mining company indicate they wanted to get rid of their employees and replace them with robots,” he commented, adding that “baby steps” were required in the introduction of automation.

While acceding that skills would need to be “shifted” and that longer-term investment would be required to develop the required know-how for workers to operate new technologies, he emphasised that this did not necessarily pre-empt sweeping redundancies.

Gelsomini added that, once the technology had been phased in and the employees had been trained to operate it, a mining company would have produced a highly skilled labour force that would become the “champions” of that technology, while improving their level of employability.

Mining innovation consultant Dr Andries Leuschner said the closure of several deep-level South African mines in the last decade on the back on low productivity could have been prevented had mining automation or robotics been implemented.

“Had they introduced robots, they could have mined these deep reserves, prevented closure and avoided extensive job losses. One needs to look at the productivity enhancements that automation has made to the operation to understand the benefits of automation for the workers,” he noted.

Further, Gelsomini believed that, as older stalwarts of the industry retired, and younger, forward-thinking executives took control of major mining houses, automation and robotics would become commonplace.

“The younger mining engineers are being trained in a way that is very technology-exposed and receptive to automation, so the mindset is shifting,” he noted.

In response to criticisms that previous attempts at mining automation by local companies had failed, Gelsomini said this was not the result of a failure in the technology, but rather a failure in the manner in which it was introduced and operated.

“The reason that mining technology in South Africa has failed is simply because it hasn’t been done well,” he asserted.

However, past failures have not deterred local miner Harmony Gold from lauding a recently introduced AngloGold Ashanti-developed technology as “game-changing, with the potential to extend the life of the entire South African gold mining sector”.

CEO Graham Briggs last month told Mining Weekly Online that the automation technology could conceivably double the life-of-mine of Harmony Gold’s Kusasalethu operation near Carletonville, where the volume of orebody locked up in pillars was believed to be equal to the volume of orebody that would be mined there in the next two decades-plus.

The new technology allowed gold-bearing pillars to be mined and then backfilled, so that they could continue to play a critical structural support role.

After being successfully piloted at AngloGold Ashanti’s Tau Tona gold mine, the technology is now being migrated to the Kopanang mine.