Mining technology is advancing quickly — but the only metric that matters is whether it adds measurable gains to blast performance, processing efficiency and profitability. That was the theme of BME’s Annual 2026 Technical Summit in Pretoria, held under the banner of Connected Mining: Turning Intelligence into Impact. Here’s what this really means: after a decade of everyone in the sector shouting about AI and digital transformation, the industry is finally being forced to answer the only question that matters — does it pay?
I’ve watched this movie before. Every commodity cycle brings a fresh wave of tech vendors promising to revolutionize mining, and most of them vanish when the bust arrives and capex gets slashed. So when I see an explosives company hosting a summit about data and connectivity, my default instinct is skepticism. But there’s substance here worth unpacking.
**The supply chain reality nobody wants to talk about**
Seelan Gobalsamy, Omnia’s Group CEO, got straight to the point most tech evangelists skip: mining depends on interconnected suppliers, transport networks and logistics, and a disruption to a key input like ammonia can throw blasting schedules and production continuity into chaos. This isn’t theoretical. Anyone who lived through 2021-2022 remembers chemical supply chains snapping like dry spaghetti. Ammonia prices whipsawed because of natural gas costs and geopolitical disruption, and explosives makers ate the margin compression or passed it on.
Gobalsamy’s prescription — diversified supply sources, disciplined capital allocation, infrastructure redundancy — is unglamorous and correct. Redundancy doesn’t show up in quarterly earnings, but it shows up when your competitor’s mine goes idle and yours doesn’t. He also flagged flooding and water scarcity as operational threats, which is right. Climate risk in mining isn’t an ESG slide deck anymore; it’s a downtime line item.
**Technology that solves actual problems**
Ralf Hennecke, BME’s Managing Director, made the argument I wish more vendors would make: volatile commodity prices, rising costs, complex geology and sustainability pressures demand productivity gains — but solutions must fit real operational challenges, suit site conditions and stay cost-effective. Revolutionary concept, I know.
Their VIPERTRON detonator is a decent illustration — a simplified, lower-cost entry into electronic detonation that keeps the timing accuracy. Electronic detonators have been around long enough that the question isn’t whether they work, it’s whether the payback justifies the outlay on your particular orebody. A cheaper on-ramp addresses the real barrier, which was never physics. It was capex and complexity.
Hennecke also pushed for industry collaboration, including sharing failures. Refreshing, though let’s be honest — nobody’s publishing their genuinely embarrassing mistakes. Still, a platform where technical teams compare notes beats everyone rediscovering the same burned fingers independently.
**Digital transformation as a business decision, not a hobby**
Valter Adão of Cadena Growth Partners delivered the most important line of the event: AI and automation investments must start with strategic objectives, measurable outcomes and credible business cases — and realizing returns may require redesigned workflows, new performance measures and training. I’d go further. Most digital transformation failures I’ve seen aren’t technology failures at all. Companies bought software and expected it to change behavior by osmosis. It doesn’t. If your org chart, incentives and workflows stay the same, you’ve just purchased an expensive screensaver.
**Mine-to-mill: the whole chain or the chain breaks**
Nishen Hariparsad of BME made the point that optimizing fragmentation, loading, haulage, crushing and grinding in isolation doesn’t necessarily improve overall performance or recovery. Gary Lane, past SAIMM president, sharpened it: finer blast fragmentation does not automatically improve recovery. It might raise throughput while reducing SAG mill power draw and producing a coarser final grind — compromising flotation recovery downstream.
This is where the sector’s compartmentalized thinking costs real money. Blasting teams get graded on powder factor and fragmentation size; metallurgists get graded on recovery; finance sees none of it connected. Lane’s integrated value tree — linking technical decisions to operational and financial outcomes — is the unsexy governance fix that actually unlocks value. I’ve sat in enough boardrooms watching departments optimize themselves into collective mediocrity. Common metrics are the antidote.
Ravi Sahu of Strayos demonstrated linking geological models, drilling records, machine vision and plant data to trace performance back to blast decisions. BME’s software suite — INNOVEX energy delivery, AXXIS initiation, BLASTMAP, XPLOLOG, XPLOSMART — applies predictive modelling to evaluate blast alternatives. Note the direction of the claim: innovation is proven when it changes a decision and delivers measurable value. That’s the right test. Hold every vendor to it.
**The case study: where the rubber meets the road**
Hennie van Niekerk presented the kind of granular work that actually moves the needle. An open-cast coal mine in Mpumalanga battled unstable highwalls, inconsistent fragmentation, excessive backbreak and over-digging. The mine’s instinct — raise drilling and powder factors — cost more and fixed nothing. Classic. When the answer costs money, the temptation is always to buy your way out instead of diagnosing.
BME’s technical team worked through the whole drill-and-blast process — pre-splitting, explosive application, face profiling, blast monitoring — and found an inadequate pre-split. Raising the split factor in stages from 0.3 to 0.6 to 0.8 kg/sq.m, matched to rock conditions, improved blast movement and fragmentation while cutting toes, vibration and fly rock. The result: reduced coal loss, 720 drilling hours freed annually, and claimed net savings of roughly R7.1 million ($435,000) a year, plus potential exposure of 48,000 tonnes of additional coal across 1.3 more strips without extra drilling and blasting spend.
I can’t audit these numbers, and you shouldn’t take a vendor’s case study as gospel. But the methodology is sound and the lesson generalizes: the cheap fix was diagnostic, not expensive. That R7 million came from thinking, not from buying a new platform. Remember that the next time someone pitches you a seven-figure digital transformation program before anyone’s walked the highwall.
**The silo problem persists**
A panel moderated by BME’s Tom Dermody — featuring Mining3’s Alan Tordoir, Junior Keyser and Robert McClure — tackled why geological models, blast designs, drilling records and plant measurements remain disconnected despite all the digital investment. The answers were honest: integration requires reliable data, shared performance measures and a common understanding of how decisions ripple through the operation. Solutions must fit each mine’s conditions and digital maturity, and training plus ongoing support are what let people actually use the information.
Here’s what this really means: the bottleneck isn’t sensors or software anymore. It’s organizational. Most mines have more data than they know what to do with and no agreed definition of success across departments. That’s a management problem wearing a technology costume.
**The macro frame Africa can’t ignore**
Mzila Mthenjane, CEO of the Minerals Council South Africa, zoomed out to the point that makes all this technology moot if unaddressed: mineral endowment creates opportunity, but competitiveness determines whether value gets captured. Unreliable rail and high electricity costs can undermine the most technologically advanced mine and efficient plant on earth. You can optimize your blast to the fourth decimal place and still lose the margin on a locomotive that never shows up.
He pointed to government-business partnerships aiming to unlock R50 billion in potential mining investment by February 2028, reduced regulatory delays and restored investor confidence. I’ll believe the regulatory streamlining when I see it — I’ve heard that promise through several administrations. But the broader argument holds: mining’s demand for explosives, chemicals, equipment, engineering and digital services is a genuine industrialization opportunity for African manufacturing and research. Infrastructure built around mines can serve communities and other industries. And with a young, growing population, the continent’s demographic dividend is real — if it gets converted into skills and sustainable industries rather than squandered.
**The bottom line for investors**
Strip away the summit gloss and three things stand out. First, the companies that will compound value in mining services are those solving diagnostic problems with disciplined capital, not those selling digital moonshots. Second, mine-to-mill integration — getting blasting, processing and finance on the same scoreboard — remains one of the largest untapped efficiency pools in the industry, and it’s mostly free to access. Third, in Africa especially, the binding constraints are rails, power and regulation, not geology or gadgetry.
Technology is a multiplier on operational competence, never a substitute for it. The Mpumalanga case proves the point: the best returns came from someone paying attention, not from a subscription. Watch the companies that remember that when the hype cycle turns — because it always does.
Source: https://im-mining.com/2026/11/09/bme-technical-summit-2026-getting-more-value-from-every-blast/
