19JULY 2023USING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR GREENER MININGCXOINSIGHTSAn interview with Alex Fenn, Head of Technology and Innovation,Sibanye StillwaterAlex Fenn,Head of Technology and Innovation, has been with Sibanye Stillwater since it was unbundled from Gold Fields Limited in 2013. At Sibanye Resources' Gold and Platinum divisions, he oversee Safe Technology and Innovation-related projects.How has your experience as the head of technology and innovation at Sibanye Stillwater helped the firm?I have been with Sibanye Stillwater since it was unbundled from goldfields in 2013. I have held numerous roles in the company ranging from mobile machinery engineering in the gold division, to new technology, specifically anomaly, and recently, more on the innovation side. My portfolios in engineering, technology, and innovation domains led me to head up the innovation drive for surveillance stored at the moment. Could you shed some light on some of the recent trends and developments in the engineering field related to mining?Mining was predominantly managed in a safety context on lagging indicators such as certain areas that are consistently below standard, and certain people consistently behaving adversely, not necessarily to the principles, values, or standards. We are now able to understand these leading indicators. We are trying to leverage digital technologies to collect and understand the data better through analytics. We are trying to enhance the value of that data by building datasets of new streams of information. Using proximity detection and collision avoidance system to prevent machine-to-machine collisions and machine-to-person incidents, which in turn improves overall productivity and efficiency of operations. The systems will design new solutions that will create an intervention at the source or engineer out a specific risk, but also provide data that would then help us understand whether there are any leading indicators in the absence of the need for the intervention if that makes sense. I think that the second trend, which is incredibly relevant globally is electrification as an enabler of decarbonization. Deeper mining is a carbon-intensive industry with a lot of heavy machinery that needs high carbon intensity of grid electricity. This creates a high demand for electricity resulting in the excessive use of coal and the emission of carbon. We have deep-level conventional mines in some cases, which do not need a lot of machinery. We also use diesel machinery, as an example, we're now looking at the electrical equivalent to reduce carbon emissions associated with the same. But, with the utility being a very large scope, there's the efficiency arbitrage, in that network that's still relevant for that. We are trying to optimize the carbon emissions, whether it be through the replacement of equipment, the optimization of processes, or the efficiency of specific machinery, we're looking at reducing our global emissions across the board in every region in which we operate.Could you elaborate on some challenges that businesses are facing in the implementation of the latest technologies that help reduce their carbon footprint and adopt greener technological scenarios?The industry in general has been very receptive to solutions offered by the market. In a lot of cases, new technologies are not specifically designed for mining applications. These technologies Alex Fenn
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