Prominent Hill mine, and its new shaft under construction.
of the highest grades of copper concentrate in the world, as well as gold and silver. Initially an open-cast mine, it later transformed into an underground operation, but still uses diesel truck to haul the ore to the surface via a decline. Prominent Hill now extends more than a kilometre underground and is moving more than 4.5 million tonnes a year, but with trucking costs rapidly increasing as the depth does, the whole operation was set to become uneconomical by 2033.
In 2022, it was decided to install a shaft and hoist instead. The shaft alone is a massive project: it is vertical, 1,330m deep and 7.5m in diameter. ABB won the contract to design and supply the production hoist for the shaft. It is a Koepe-type hoist with a capacity of 39,400kg. Together, hoist and shaft are a $600m project and are expected to expand the mine’s production capacity to 6.5 million tonnes per year, an increase of more than a third.
This is a big productivity increase. The per-worker productivity boost is even bigger, given the dramatic reduction in truck-driving hours. BHP is predicting that the move to electric hoisting will cut their operating costs by a fifth, with a drop in CO2
emissions of more
than a quarter. And by allowing access to ore bodies that are impossible to exploit under the current trucking plan, the expansion will also extend the productive life of the mine by an estimated four years.
www.hoistmagazine.com | July 2025 | 35
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