Scania and Australian services provider Regroup will launch a world-first fleet of autonomous in-pit mining trucks in the WA’s Pilbara in late 2025.
The rollout builds on the recent announcement that Scania will begin sales of its commercially available autonomous trucks.
“Scania in Australia has been working closely with several partners in the local mining industry over recent years to finesse our autonomous truck programme in advance of this announcement,” said Scania Australia managing director Manfred Streit.
“We are delighted that this historic event, the first order globally for a fleet of Scania’s new autonomous trucks has been made by a privately-owned Australian company, which will provide these trucks for use in an Australian mining environment.”
Peter Hafmar, head of autonomous solutions at Scania, added: “With this fleet order, we bring to commercial reality the concept of an autonomous fleet working at scale in demanding real-world conditions. We anticipate the Regroup fleet deployment will be the first of many, as operators around the world see the safety, productivity and ease-of-use benefits of Scania’s technology.”
Regroup says it’s excited to be establishing its first fleet of autonomous vehicles in the Australian mining industry.
Regroup managing director, Michael Still said: “It is not lost on us that we are able to collaborate with one of our key, and long-standing partners in Element 25 as we look to roll this solution out across their site. We have always been aligned in our values in supporting industry innovation and the electrification of the global vehicle fleet. It is great that we can demonstrate this on site.
“Regroup has excelled at initiating and delivering sustainable and renewable practices, and these new autonomous trucks are just the first step in our transport plan. We are looking forward to adding Scania zero emission autonomous mining trucks as the next step.
“In addition to the autonomous trucks coming next year, we have also ordered a driver-operated battery electric Scania rigid 8×4 truck that we will look to incorporate into the Element 25 Butcherbird operation which will serve as a water cart, underlining our overall aim of decarbonising our mining activities.
“We see the autonomous Scania fleet also reducing our diesel consumption, as we’re moving from a larger capacity fleet of 100-200 tonne vehicles to a smaller class unit, and from a decarbonisation perspective, we’re burning less fuel on site, so we’re reducing our impact on the environment to achieve the same commercial result.”
Regarding the new autonomous fleet, Still says there will be no reduction in his driver cohort, because the new fleet will be operating as an expansion of a current programme, so no additional drivers will be sought.
“On the one hand we will reduce our (notional) driver requirement by 21 people, due to the autonomous trucks replacing three shifts of seven drivers, so there is a saving on wages, flights, food and accommodation, but we will be creating control room jobs, which are safer environments, and eventually we anticipate they can be remote sites, such as their hometowns.
“Our existing workforce is unaffected, but it allows us as we grow not to rely on new talent into the business as much as in the past. We’ll be able to take people out of the dirtier more hazardous environment and deploy them into safer cleaner more appropriate, more attractive working environments,” Still explained.
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