Rio Tinto aims for driverless trains growth
MINER Rio Tinto yesterday unveiled a $518m (£327m) plan to pioneer the use of driverless trains in Australia in a bid to ramp up its production.
The company, which already has driverless trucks, plans to run fully automated trains across its 1,500 km (930 mile) iron-ore rail network in north west Australia from 2014, to help boost output 60 per cent by 2015.
The re-fitted trains will be operated like a space mission from a control room in Perth, 1,500 km away, from where Rio now runs the driverless trucks.
“This is not just about job losses. That’s not what this is about. This is about us remaining competitive,” said Greg Lilleyman, president of Rio Tinto’s Pilbara operations.
Rio says it wants to avoid forcing workers to toil beneath the scorching heat of the Pilbara, a desert region that ranks among the world’s richest iron ore precincts, but automation also enables it to overcome a shortage of skilled labour.
The shortage has been fuelled by a record boom in mining and energy investment, with $230bn worth of projects underway or approved in Australia.
Salaries have skyrocketed to the point where a truck driver can earn more than $100,000 a year.
At least half of Rio Tinto’s 500 train drivers may lose their current jobs, with the rest to be used on about one-fifth of the network that will still need drivers.
Rio said no one will be laid off as it aims to retrain workers for new roles.
Rio has long dreamed of automating its trains, but put the plan on hold during the financial crisis in 2008 when it struggled with a massive debt burden from its takeover of Alcan.
Other miners, including BHP, are watching how Rio’s experiment pans out and have yet to follow suit.
Rio says it is still expanding its overall Pilbara workforce and will need thousands of new workers, on top of the 10,500 it already employs, to boost iron ore production to 353m tonnes a year by 2015.