Remote Control Technologies has completed its first Caterpillar D10T dozer conversion – enabling the machine to work under remote control at the top of a steep openpit highwall – for the Savage River magnetite iron ore mine in western Tasmania.

Operator Australian Bulk Minerals mines three contiguous pits at Savage River, 100km south-west of Burnie. They average 100-150m in depth but a significant cut back and extensions will deepen them by up to a further 250m.

ABM, which has production drill rigs working at the base of the highwall being operated by remote control, determined that operating a manned dozer on the cut back was too dangerous. The company approached RCT to supply a line of sight remote dozer solution.

RCT senior business development manager Phil Goode said the remote dozer would also be used to clear slips on pit walls and for dozing in unstable areas of the mine. The company manufactured and installed the dozer remote system and provided onsite product skills training.

“It’s the first D10 dozer on remote that RCT has done,” Goode said. “That’s the very latest model Cat dozer and control system. So we have demonstrated we are on top of that as far as technical systems go.

“For Savage River the result is that they are able to work on the highwall in a safer manner than with an operator in the machine.”

The current pit cut back at Savage River is expected to be completed this year. Implementation of ABM’s new 16-year mine life expansion project has commenced, under which the company plans to maintain production of about 2.5 million tonnes per annum of iron ore pellets from the Savage River concentrator.