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    ABB on 2026 as the year for measured innovation: practical notes for mine engineers

    December 13, 2025|

    Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

    ABB on 2026 as the year for measured innovation: practical notes for mine engineers

    First reported on International Mining – News

    30 Second Briefing

    ABB’s Björn Jonsson, Business Line Manager Mining & Materials in its Process Industries division, frames 2026 as a year for “measured innovation”, urging miners to prioritise deployable automation and electrification over perfect long‑term blueprints. He points to fast-changing conditions from deep underground hoisting systems to large open-pit truck fleets and complex concentrators, with demand for critical materials forecast to multiply several-fold over coming decades. For engineers, the message is to focus on modular, upgradable control, power and digital systems that can be rolled out incrementally rather than waiting for fully optimised end-state designs.

    Technical Brief

    • Jonsson stresses standardised electrical and control architectures so hoists, trucks and plants share common platforms.
    • He calls for modular switchgear, drives and MCCs that accept staged upgrades rather than wholesale replacement.
    • In open pits, he points to trolley‑assist and trolley‑ready truck fleets as interim steps towards full electrification.
    • For concentrators, Jonsson emphasises advanced process control layers that can be overlaid on legacy DCS hardware.
    • Data infrastructure is framed around scalable historians and edge devices, avoiding single “big bang” MES rollouts.
    • Cyber‑security is treated as a design constraint, with segmented networks and role‑based access for remote optimisation.
    • He argues that mines delaying automation until final pit or plant configurations are fixed risk stranded capital and obsolescent kit.

    Our Take

    ABB appears several times in our mining database not just in op-eds but in technical pieces, such as its December 2025 work on automated LiDAR shaft scanning, signalling that its 2026 ‘measured innovation’ narrative is backed by concrete digital hoisting and monitoring deployments rather than pure thought leadership.

    Among the 294 Mining stories, critical materials coverage is still relatively thin compared with iron ore or gold, so ABB framing 2026 as a pivot year suggests OEMs are now explicitly timing their automation and electrification roadmaps to anticipated demand peaks from battery and magnet supply chains.

    For operators, ABB’s focus on incremental innovation by 2026 likely means more bolt‑on upgrades to existing hoists, drives and control systems for critical materials mines, rather than greenfield-only solutions, which can be easier to justify in current capex-constrained project pipelines.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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