Enhancing the Productivity and Reducing the Operational Cost in Mining

Under the current perspective, leveraging the digital technologies and enabling predictive operations, holds great potential. At Hindustan Zinc, we have also invested in digital enablement of operations in our mines. Today, many of our smart equipment are run from the surface, which helps us minimize the man power dependency, while increasing productivity.

Secondly, owing to increased digital connectivity, all the equipment is now continually transmitting data to our central control room, known as the collaboration centre. This constant flow of information helps our data scientists make critical predictions on the possible malfunctions, disasters, etc. We are focusing on quality, ensuring that we have a digital backed TQM practice all across our mines and operations. That means we don't unnecessarily create in-process rejects, which again goes into more cost.

At the same time, we have put in the video analytics based product quality control, wherein, the video cameras analyze the final product applying image analysis to point out the possible defects of the products. Hence, implementation of digital application is now imperative to improve productivity while reducing cost.

In a bid to produce at any cost, many mining companies have invested significant resources into marginal mines that can no longer produce profitably. What kind of insight is required to prevent this?

It is crucial to possess extensive information and knowledge about the concerned mine in order to mitigate the risk involved. However, that being said, it must be underlined that capital allocation is essential for the mining industry. One cannot be too conservative as mining as an industry itself necessitates having a deep pocket.

To survive in the mining industry, one has to have a long term vision and a clear understanding of the risks involved. It is necessary to invest a substantial amount of capital and perform a thorough exploration in order to find a good quality ore. It is further essential to have a good risk management system in place that helps ensure that the mining process attains long term low cost operations.

With the increasing concerns about environmental impact of extraction and processing operations, how do you think the whole work culture of a mining company should be changed in order to achieve the sustainability goal?

Nearly all mining firms today, especially Hindustan Zinc, which is one of the top mining corporations in the world, cannot afford to ignore environmental issues. It is because of our sustainability measures that we are already number five in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, and number one in terms of sustainability in the asia-pacific region.

At Hindustan Zinc, we have now instituted numerous checks and balances to recognize the environmental violations and take corrective actions. For the last three to four years, we have invested heavily to bring in state-of-the-art technologies to ensure low emission into the atmosphere. Currently, we are putting up huge waste water treatment plants in Zawar and Agucha mines to treat the water that forms in the underground mining process. We plan to clean the dirty water of 12,000 cubic litre per day, and use it in our plants.

Moreover, we also process the sewage of the entire Udaipur city and clean it to use in our operation. Today, 80 percent of the total water required for the operation is acquired from this sewage treatment plant at Udaipur.

Moving forward, how do you see the future of the mining industry? How can it leverage new technologies to unlock deposits and improve productivity on the mine site?

As always, mining will continue to be the base of all the economic activities. However, in the days ahead, mining will shift from being human intensive to technology oriented. The underground mining is already impacted by robotic technologies and very soon, 30 to 40 percent of the mining will be performed by robots. Today, we can already operate drills from the surface, and I believe that in the future there won't be any need for humans to work below and that everything, from a pin to plane, would be done by robots.

Furthermore, the machines of tomorrow will be intelligent enough to perform high risk activity and maintenance analysis. It won't take much time to shift to completely technology oriented mining, which would be operated from fantastic offices.