Arun Misra, CEO, Hindustan Zinc, in an interaction with Sudhakar Singh, Editor, Industry Outlook, shares his insights on the evolution of the mining industry and concerns pertaining to surging cost, environmental impact, and more.
Mines are increasingly getting deeper with more complex ore bodies, rising energy costs and infrastructure short¬ages, causing mining companies to be under pressure to control costs while improving efficiency and performance. How do you see this change happening in the mining industry?
It is true that no mine can forever remain on the surface. However, with increasing depth of mines, the cost of exploration decreases. For example — the cost of exploration from the surface is comparatively higher as we often have to explore up to one kilometer in depth.
Whereas for the underground mines, we develop the mine in the first place for production of minerals and in the later part we use that development to perform drilling from underground. Hence, as we drill from underground, we consequently end up saving the cost of drilling.
Secondly, as a mine descends further, we have to reduce the dependency on trucks to carry out the minerals from the ores. The miners often have to de¬ploy shafts that carry the minerals from the bottom of the mines. This whole process in turn drastically decreases the cost of mining. For instance, at both of our mines - Rampura Agucha and Sindesar Khurd , we have invested in development of a material winding process that not only has helped us reduce
With the growth of the electrical and electronics industry, the demand for zinc and lead is rising rapidly. How is Hindustan Zinc adapting to this change in zinc and lead mining in India?
Hindustan Zinc is the most prominent zinc and lead mining organization in India. We possess the capability of meeting the nation’s entire demand for zinc. Currently, India consumes nearly 80 to 85 percent of the total 750 - 800 KT zinc that we produce. While the balance requirement for zinc is met through import.
Moving ahead, as the government strives to turn India Atmanirbhar, the domestic production of different components such as mobile phones, EV’s, lead acid batteries, and more, will propel the demand for zinc and Lead in India. Furthermore, increasing infrastructure projects like development of the bridges, railway lines, etc will also boost the demand for these minerals in India.
Sliding productivity amid surging cost remains one of the most pressing challenges for the mining industry. How can this be addressed?
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, and so on. 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 asiapacific 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.
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