Newmont brings private 5G to its Cadia surface ops

Newmont has replaced wi-fi with private 5G to remotely control dozers working in the tailings area of its Cadia gold and copper mine in western NSW.

Image credit: Newmont

The miner has deployed Ericsson private 5G for so-called “teleremote” operation of the dozer fleet, which operates on the surface.

Tailings are the leftover material after gold and copper is extracted from ore brought to the surface. 

All of Cadia’s underground operations are also teleremote, courtesy of a technology setup by Epiroc, Macleans and Orica, according to site visit documentation [pdf] released at the end of last year. 

Ericsson said in a statement that private 5G overcame wi-fi limitations that had curbed the productivity of dozers.

It said that Newmont previously could not “connect more than two machines at distances of no more than 100m on wi-fi, before the network and machines became unusable”.

A single 5G radio now connects the “full dozer fleet across the width of [Cadia’s] tailings works construction area … [with] up to 175Mbps uplink throughput (enough for up to 12 dozers if required), Ericsson said.

The miner is also using an “uplink booster” in the Ericsson radio to improve upload performance at the site.

5G could now be brought to more sites outside of Cadia.

Newmont’s director of process control, networks and operational cellular Chris Twaddle said that the miner has a “long-term digital transformation vision to use 5G for smart mining at our tier one surface and underground mines globally.”