EACON autonomous night shifts at Havana Pit: safety and haulage insights for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
EACON has started autonomous night-shift haulage at the Havana Pit in Western Australia, extending its June 2026 achievement of autonomous day operations with Thiess and Norton Gold Fields, owned by Zijin Mining Group. The system currently controls a fleet of six Komatsu HD1500 rigid trucks, moving ore and waste without on-board operators under low-light conditions. Night deployment will test perception, localisation and traffic-control algorithms in reduced visibility, providing data on tyre wear, fuel burn and productivity for potential scale-up across the pit.
Technical Brief
- Six Komatsu HD1500 rigid trucks form the initial autonomous fleet at Havana Pit.
- Collaboration structure involves EACON as AHS provider, Thiess as mining contractor, and Norton Gold Fields as owner.
- Night-shift rollout follows a staged commissioning approach, progressing from supervised trials to production deployment.
- System architecture integrates perception, localisation and traffic-control modules tuned for open-pit haul roads.
- Human–machine interface still requires control-room operators for intervention authority and exception management.
- Safety case must address interaction with manned equipment, light vehicles and emergency response under darkness.
- Data from Havana will inform change management, training and fatigue-risk controls for mixed autonomous–manual fleets.
- Similar AHS deployments in Western Australia are likely to benchmark Havana’s performance and incident statistics.
Our Take
EACON’s work at the Havana Pit in Western Australia comes shortly after its Hong Kong listing to fund autonomous haulage expansion, suggesting this gold deployment is an early international reference site to demonstrate the technology beyond China.
The use of six Komatsu HD1500 trucks under EACON control contrasts with its recent projects in China that focus on battery-electric and cabless rigid trucks, signalling that the company is positioning its software stack to be OEM-agnostic and suitable for brownfield fleets at Australian gold operations.
With Havana Pit in Western Australia joining a handful of gold items in our database that are tagged for both Projects and Safety, autonomous night shifts are likely to be scrutinised by other regional gold miners as a test case for reducing fatigue-related incidents without disrupting established production schedules.
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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