Interview with Chris Cairns March 14, 2019, page-23

Potential new mining methods, which are safe, rational, and with a minimum of operational losses, is developed or already existing mining methods are altered/modifyed for mining of deep steeply dipping large hard rock ore bodies.

The focus is on large scale underground hard rock mining methods and cut and fill and stoping methods as the situation all around the world is that an increasing number of mines are operation in increasing depths.

Automation and digitalization are being introduced globally throughout almost every major industry, with the benefits of increased safety and productivity. As mining takes place in hazardous environments, a clear trend towards reliance on digitalisation instead of staff has already begun and there are a number of reports on how many jobs can actually be replaced by automation and the figures are typically up to about 50%.

It is evident that automation will play an increasingly important role to meet the increasing costs for underground production, in order to make it more efficiently and optimized, and therefore it has also been necessary to implement different kind of automation within the mining industry, incl. automated underground works of autonomous or remote controlled mining machines/equipment such as:
- drilling and drill rig,
- underground loading and transportation systems,
- tunnelling.

Kind regards,