Published on the 17/08/2022 | Written by Heather Wright

Agriculture and mining confront ‘startup fatigue’…

“The trick to automation is not making things go, it’s making things stop,” Aron Cory says. 

Cory, head of IDC’s worldwide agricultural program, was addressing the issue of safety in autonomous equipment, in an IDC webinar briefing looking at the uptake of automation across both agriculture and mining. 

“They do that knowing full well that some technologies will work, and some won’t.”

While the technology has a strong foothold in mining, uptake in agriculture, despite an apparent interest by agribusiness, is less robust – although Cory is bullish about the future. 

“For agriculture it has been almost the blink of an eye since we first saw some of the first prototypes out there, but in my opinion there has been a fairly rapid adoption and fairly high interest in autonomy,” he says. 

“We see it a lot more in higher value crops where there is more of a taste for experimentation.”

Recent IDC surveys suggest agribusinesses are ‘fairly agreeable’ when it comes to autonomy. Fifty-six percent say they either already have some form of autonomy in play or are going to implement some in the next 12 months, with a further 28 percent saying they’re evaluating whether it will happen. 

In fact, around eight percent of revenue is currently being spent on either precision agriculture or autonomy across the sector as businesses look for increased efficiency and ROI, better input accuracy – providing better bang for their bucks out of inputs begin put on the field – and better equipment, labour and time management. 

But Cory noted the issue of ‘startup fatigue’ where startups have ‘promised the world’ only to fail, souring the pot for others. It is, he says, a key issue up there with demand for ROI. 

Ben Kirkwood, head of IDC’s worldwide mining program, says while many of the issues faced by agribusinesss are shared by the mining sector, that startup fatigue isn’t one of them. And the reason? Many mining companies are working to assist startups in developing their technology.

“They do that knowing full well that some [technologies] will work, and some don’t.”

IDC predicts that this year 75 percent of the top 100 miners will operate remote and/or autonomous drill rigs throughout their operations, improving equipment efficiencies.

That’s supported by research which shows 56 percent of all mining organisations surveyed are currently operating autonomous exploration drill rigs, at least to some extent, Kirkwood says.

Topping the list of areas of the mining value chain where companies are dedicating their digital spend were mining and processing equipment. 

“Automating mobile and stationary equipment across mining and processing areas of operations will result in productivity improvements as the equipment’s usage time will increase due to a lack of changeovers and breaks as well as improved predictability and planning/adherence to plan due to equipment following set practices,” he says.

That in turn will result in cost reduction benefits and drive the optimisation of energy, water and consumption of other consumables, which then improves the equipment sustainability performance.

Sustainability was a key strategic priority for miners in 2022, with improved safety the top operational initiative, and declining revenue the biggest business concern for the year. 

All three, Kirkwood says, can be addressed by automation. 

“The automation of processes and equipment stands to optimise consumption of consumables such as water and power which will improve the sustainability performance of operations.

“Automating equipment removes personnel from having to work in hazardous environments and in close proximity to dangerous equipment and processes, which improves safety. And new automated equipment improves asset utilisation and performance predictability which improves the productivity which can boost productivity.”

He noted the example of Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri iron ore mine in Pilbara, as an example of a highly automated mine. Opened in June this year, it was developed as a digital first green field operation. 

The mine, which has around 600 employees and an expected capacity of 43 million tons, has a plethora of automated processes and equipment, including autonomous drill rigs and haulage trucks, and water carts – the world’s first. It also has an autonomous ore sampling system, and has a digital twin. 

But while mining has a nearly 20 year history of automation, there are still challenges, Kirkwood notes. 

“Different operational steps within mining are typically siloed and getting different departmental systems to integrate with one another is no easy task.” 

Digital talent, technology compatibility, organisational buy-in and ROI remain key challenges too. But despite those concerns Kirkwood says a recent survey identified that 86.5 percent of organisations are, or have plans within next 18 months to invest in equipment automation. 

“That 13.5 percent of organisations that don’t have automation plans is a staggering 25 percent decrease from the 18 percent identified in last years survey,” he adds. 

“While haulage trucks, drill rigs and rail networks are commonly associated with automation initiatives, we’re also expecting significant growth in the automation of processing equipment and excavators with the number of organisations at least piloting the automation of processing equipment expected to see 15 percent growth to 42.6 percent in the next 18 months and the trialling and implementation of automated excavators expected to see 28 percent growth to 31.7 percent.” 

Concerns in agriculture were similar: ROI – with Cory noting that growers ‘aren’t impressed with technology for technologies sake, but only what technology can do to help their business’ [something we at iStart would argue is the right stance to take for all businesses anyway] – digital skills and talent, interoperability, and trust and regulatory issues. 

“A lot of countries are starting to review laws on autonomy in the field,” Cory notes, citing Canada, the UK and several European countries which are reviewing laws at the moment and attempting ‘to bring down barriers while still making it safe’.

So is mining easier to automate?

Cory and Kirkwood seemed in agreement that in many ways the answer is yes.

“You can exclude a lot of the variation and have better access to operational control centre. You don’t have to worry about, for example, wildlife running through a mine site or people having a picnic in the middle of a large underground iron ore facility as you would in agri,” Cory notes. 

“Yes mining can control that better,” Kirkwood agrees. “One small area creates larger revenues so you have got potential to hire more security and erect bigger stronger fences and things like that. 

“But I do think a critical component of that is the in-build safety built into the automated equipment. You would have these large haulage trucks driving through a mining site and they’re all equipped with LiDar, radar, these sorts of devices that monitor everything around them so in the event of someone or a kangaroo walking in front these devices stop the truck, digger, or whatever piece of equipment is being operated.”