Swedish Midroc gets 800m SEK order in Indonesia

Swedish company Midroc Automation has been requested to deliver a fully automated system to manage the World?s largest gold mine in Papua, Indonesia. The client is the American mining company Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. and the order is valued at around 800 million Swedish krona (SEK).

The mines in Papua are located 4,100 meters above sea level in the Grasberg mountain. It is the largest known occurrence of gold world wide and has for decades been excavated from the ground as open mines. Freeport-McMoRan employs currently 30,000 persons in four mines.

As of 2016, the mining will move underground and to handle this transition, Freeport-McMoRan has entrusted the Swedish company Midroc Automation to establish the control system to minimize drop in productivity.

Midroc has previously delivered a control system to one of the four mines.

?The whole production will be automated and remotely controlled from a control room on the surface from where all traffic in the tunnels below will be supervised and directed with an advanced traffic control system,? Jonas Bergmark, Midroc Automation, was quoted as saying by Scandasia.com.

?The purpose is to handle the production with a minimum number of employees down in the tunnels below. The train system below will be unmanned and automated which will reduce the risk for accidents. At the same time it will increase the productivity and minimize the environmental impact,? he adds.

The system will make the Indonesian mines the most hi-tech underground mining operation anywhere in the world. (*)