Sudbury's Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) has gone international in signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with an industry technology centre in Australia.
CEMI and METS Ignited of Brisbane signed an agreement to establish a vehicle for each organization to collaborate and accelerate the commercialization of mining innovations in Canada and Australia.
"We have boots on the ground in Australia now," said Charles Nyabeze, CEMI's vice-president of business development and commercialization, in a Sept. 13 phone interview. "We will have access to game-changing solutions not only for our Canadian mines, but also for the mines we work with globally."
The two organizations intend to cross-promote each other in their respective countries when it comes to mining-related exploration, extraction, transportation; tailings, waste and water management technologies; and digitalization of mine operations using analytics, artificial intelligence, automation and robotics.
"We don't want to reinvent the wheel," continued Nyabeze. "If technology is being developed out of Australia that is already far along and that has already solved some of the challenges being researched in Sudbury or Canada, we want to be able to bridge that gap."
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CEMI was established in 2007 to help the mining industry achieve "step-change improvement in performance" through techniques and technology provided to the industry.
METS Ignited is an industry-led, government-funded, growth centre for the mining equipment, technology and services (METS) sector.
In a Sept. 12 news release, METS Ignited CEO Adrian Beer said: “A relationship with Canada’s CEMI will allow a mechanism for made in Australia solutions to enter the Canadian and Global mining ecosystems.”
CEMI president-CEO Doug Morrison added: "This MOU allows for an intentional purpose-driven relationship between Canada and Australia’s mining innovation ecosystem."
More information about the kinds of technologies that will be shared between each organization will be available towards the end of October.
