Safety in underground mining is framed by Johan Mostert, SHEQT Executive at Redpath Africa, as a core operational discipline rather than a standalone compliance task, requiring integration into planning, communication, decision-making and daily task execution. He stresses that rapidly changing geotechnical conditions and production pressure can quickly erode controls if safety is not embedded in frontline behaviours and supervisory routines. For engineers and managers, this points to designing procedures, shift plans and reporting systems where hazard identification, ground control checks and clear communication protocols are treated as primary production inputs.

Booyco Electronics has launched its Missing Person Locator (MPL), an underground personnel tracking system designed to locate workers rapidly during emergencies and meet tighter South African mine safety legislation. The MPL integrates with existing Booyco collision avoidance and cap-lamp tags to provide real-time positional data in complex tunnel networks, addressing delays and blind spots in conventional tag board and muster-based procedures. Faster localisation in the “golden hour” after an incident allows more targeted rescue deployment and supports formalised search-and-rescue protocols in deep, extensive workings.

Overland conveyors are returning to mine planning as ABB Process Industries President Joachim Braun links them to energy resilience, higher productivity and efficiency at large, power-intensive sites. Speaking at the FT Metals and Mining Summit in London, Braun pointed to long-distance conveying as a way to stabilise electrical load profiles compared with diesel truck fleets and to integrate more on-site renewables. For geotechnical and civil teams, this signals renewed demand for multi‑kilometre conveyor corridors, elevated structures and substations designed around high-capacity, continuously loaded belts.