Master Drilling has secured its first Portuguese contract from copper-zinc producer Boliden Somincor to construct two raisebored shafts, each 630 m deep and 4.5 m in diameter. The twin vertical excavations will be critical for long-term hoisting, ventilation or service access, demanding precise control of deviation over the full 630 m and careful management of rock stability around the 4.5 m diameter openings. For geotechnical and mine planning teams, the project signals growing availability of large-diameter raiseboring capacity in European base metal operations.

Metso has expanded its Metso Digital portfolio with three new platforms – Digital Production Management, Data-driven Performance Analytics and Safety Performance Platform – aimed at turning plant and fleet data into actionable production and safety decisions. Digital Production Management targets end-to-end throughput optimisation across crushing, grinding and downstream circuits, while Data-driven Performance Analytics applies advanced analytics to equipment condition and process KPIs. The Safety Performance Platform centralises incident, near-miss and behavioural data to support risk control and compliance in large, multi-site mining operations.

Innovative Wireless Technologies (IWT) has been selected for negotiation of a US Department of Energy award to lead the Mine of the Future: Proving Ground Initiative, a national programme to accelerate advanced mining technologies. The initiative will focus on development, testing and deployment of new systems in operating US mines, creating dedicated proving-ground sites rather than relying on ad hoc pilots. For geotechnical and operations teams, this signals forthcoming funded trials of next-generation communications, sensing and automation platforms under real production conditions.