Kinross Tasiast has commissioned a Hitachi EX8000-6 face-shovel excavator, now the largest mining excavator operating in Mauritania and only the fourth EX8000 unit delivered in Africa. The machine, weighing over 800 t and typically paired with ultra-class haul trucks, is expected to materially increase loading rates in the Tasiast open pit. For mine planners and geotechnical teams, the larger bench heights, wider dig faces and higher instantaneous production rates will influence slope design, traffic management and blast fragmentation requirements.

Yindjibarndi Energy Corporation has reached financial close on the Jinbi Solar Project in Western Australia’s Pilbara and signed a 30‑year power purchase agreement with Rio Tinto to supply renewable electricity to the miner’s operations on Yindjibarndi Ngurra. The Indigenous-led project will now move into construction, adding large-scale solar generation into Rio Tinto’s Pilbara grid, which is currently dominated by gas and diesel. For miners and project engineers, the deal signals growing long-horizon offtake certainty for utility-scale renewables integrated with remote, heavy-industry loads.

Lampson Australia is leveraging more than three decades of heavy-lift and haulage experience to execute keystone mining projects using ultra-heavy crawler cranes and specialised transporters for components such as mining shovels and draglines. The company’s fleet includes high-capacity Lampson Transi-Lift cranes and multi-axle self-propelled modular transporters (SPMTs) configured for multi-hundred-tonne loads, long load paths and constrained brownfield corridors. For mine expansion and shutdown work, this capability reduces on-site assembly, shortens critical-path outages and lowers ground improvement requirements compared with conventional stick-built approaches.