RCT remote shutdown at McArthur River Mine: safety design notes for HSE teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
RCT has secured a contract to deploy its Remote Shutdown System across five additional bulldozers at Glencore’s McArthur River Mine in Australia, following successful trials on a grader and a dozer. The Epiroc-owned automation specialist’s system allows operators to remotely cut power to mobile plant in surface operations, providing an extra control layer around high-risk interactions with heavy equipment. For mine planners and HSE teams, the rollout signals growing acceptance of engineered remote-stop solutions as part of mobile equipment risk management on large zinc–lead sites.
Technical Brief
- Remote Shutdown System is configured for surface mobile plant, targeting grader and dozer interaction zones.
- System provides an engineered control, supplementing procedural controls and exclusion zones around heavy equipment.
- Remote cut-off allows power isolation without entering the machine’s immediate hazard radius.
- Remote shutdown is expected to reduce exposure during recovery, bogged equipment and unplanned proximity events.
- Epiroc-owned RCT solution supports layered safety consistent with contemporary mobile equipment risk hierarchies.
- Wider adoption of remote-stop systems on large open pits could influence future regulator expectations for mobile plant controls.
Our Take
Glencore features heavily in recent mega‑merger coverage in our database, so incremental safety and control upgrades at McArthur River Mine signal that day‑to‑day asset risk management is still being advanced even as corporate strategy is in flux.
Among the 102 keyword‑matched pieces on zinc and lead, most focus on market balance and new projects, so a safety‑product deployment at an existing zinc‑lead operation highlights how mature assets are leaning on technology rather than major redesigns to manage operational risk.
With only single units of a grader and bulldozer initially trialled, this RCT remote shutdown rollout at McArthur River Mine looks like a staged validation step that could be replicated across Glencore’s wider base‑metal portfolio if performance and integration with Epiroc fleets prove robust.
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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