Mining Digital November 2021 | Page 56

FERREXPO

“ For a green steel product , you need to move away from the traditional technologies that use coke and filament gas for fuel , and towards electric arc furnaces and the DR processes ”

JIM NORTH INTERIM CEO & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR , FERREXPO
Drones Ferrexpo implemented drone surveys in 2019 at its seond original Ukrainian mine in Ukraine called Yeristovo , and is now in a position to roll out the process at its original mine , Poltava . “ What took three surveyors two weeks to do , we can get done now in around two days using drones ”, reveals North . “ Some of our surveyors have trained to become drone pilots ; taking place positions and feeding that digital information back to the office to convert into a data file and load into our planning systems . It ’ s dramatically improved the efficiency with which we can do surveying and mapping of the mine and , obviously improves the accuracy , because you ' re taking that chance for human error out of the equation . And we ’ re also improving safety by taking workers out of the hazards of the person / machine interface in the mine ”.
56 November 2021