Zijin Longking has dispatched the first production-line LK220E battery electric mining trucks from its Longyang City plant in Fujian Province, marking the start of series manufacture at the Longjing Smart Environmental Protection Industrial Park. At the same event on 9 May, the company signed a new contract for its larger LK350E battery electric truck, signalling customer commitment to higher-capacity BEV haulage. For mine planners and fleet engineers, this points to accelerating availability of Chinese-built battery trucks in the 220–350 t class for large open-pit operations.

Komatsu’s Mine 4D technology is being deployed at Boliden’s Kevitsa open-pit nickel-copper operation in northern Finland to give dispatchers and supervisors real-time visibility of fleets working in temperatures down to –40°C. The integrated platform links high-precision GNSS machine guidance, fleet management and production reporting so operators can track shovel–truck interactions, ore–waste boundaries and cycle times across 24/7 shifts. For engineers, the key gains are tighter compliance to dig lines, reduced rehandle and faster response to equipment or road condition issues in one of Europe’s harshest mining climates.

BHP and Rio Tinto have formed a Tailings Management Consortium (TMC) and issued joint guidance focused on improving tailings dewatering and storage facility management. The collaboration targets higher degrees of dewatering to move operations away from conventional slurry dams towards safer, lower‑footprint options such as thickened, filtered or dry‑stacked tailings, in line with emerging global standards. Both miners state they will share operational learnings and design practices across industry, signalling more open benchmarking of tailings performance and risk controls.