EACON AHS project in Australia: ramp design and traffic lessons for mine engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
EACON has started commissioning six Komatsu HD1500 rigid trucks retrofitted with its autonomous haulage system in the Havana Pit at Norton Gold Fields’ gold mine in Western Australia, owned by Zijin Mining. The trucks are already running fully autonomous load–haul–dump cycles in an active operating pit, integrating with live traffic and production schedules rather than a segregated test area. For mine planners and geotechnical teams, this signals growing deployment of retrofit AHS on mixed fleets, with implications for ramp design, traffic management, and berm and intersection geometry.
Technical Brief
- Autonomous cycles in a live pit demand stricter exclusion zones, geofenced berms and controlled intersection layouts.
- For other open pits, retrofitted AHS on rigid trucks will drive formalised traffic rules and geotechnical sign-off of haul geometries.
Our Take
EACON’s work at Norton Gold Fields’ Havana Pit in Australia sits alongside multiple China deployments in our database, signalling that its autonomous haulage system is moving from China-centric coal and iron ore fleets into international gold operations.
The six retrofitted Komatsu HD1500 trucks at Havana Pit contrast with EACON’s large battery-electric fleets at Zhundong and Baowu’s Taihe iron ore mine, suggesting the company is positioning its software stack to work across both conventional diesel and fully electric haulage in different regulatory environments.
With several other China-focused AHS vendors like CiDi Inc and Shanghai BOONRAY also scaling fleets, EACON’s presence in both Australia and China gives it a differentiator in our coverage as one of the few Chinese-origin AHS providers with active deployments in a major Western gold jurisdiction.
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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