Technology and Innovation at Gold Fields St Ives

RCT’s long-standing relationship with Gold Fields saw the parties recently collaborate to address production bottlenecks through the implementation of RCT technology and increase production output and worker safety.

RCT’s ControlMaster® Surface Solution was commissioned allowing St Ives to operate remotely from the surface during firing times in a safe environment. Through surface remoting, St Ives also found that there was no downtime with their trucks between shifts. The increase in productivity from a trucking perspective was very noticeable.

Through the utilisation of ControlMaster® Guidance System, St Ives operation was able to achieve greater speeds, consistently high production and less damage - due to technology which assists in avoiding walls and major obstacles.

St Ives’ next development phase under consideration with RCT includes:

• Point-to-Point (P2P) – where the operator in the cabin activates a button to move the loader from the stockpile into the stope. The operator will resume manual control to load the bucket. The button is activated again for the loader to return on its own, autonomously, on guidance to the stockpile.
• MultiMachine – where one operator on the surface can remotely control two loaders underground from two different levels.

For St Ives, the objective of this phase is for further efficiency and increased operator safety for their underground mine.

Time to watch: 4:32 min