A renewed focus on enhancing safety, promoting sustainability, and providing tangible value to customers through responsible and innovative mining practices came under the spotlight at the long-awaited return of BME’s Technical Summit in October 2025.
This year’s summit, the first since 2017, has revived a longstanding tradition that energises the mining industry by offering a strong platform to highlight BME’s innovations, share the company’s extensive knowledge, and facilitate networking among industry stakeholders.
Held at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, the 26th summit included presentations by global experts from the US, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden and South Africa. The event brought together more than 300 industry stakeholders, ranging from regulators, customers, international partners, and representatives of Omnia Group and BME under the theme ‘Mining for Today and Tomorrow: Integrity Driven Innovation’.
Navigating unprecedented change
Seelan Gobalsamy, CEO of Omnia Holdings (BME’s parent company), said that Omnia and BME were united by more than just supply chains and production, but also their focus on innovation and precision, underpinned by sophisticated technologies and robust scientific practice.
He noted that the summit was being held at a time of global volatility and unexpected change, requiring innovative solutions to enhance resilience and adaptability.
“This summit provides a forum for collaboration to chart the way forward in an increasingly complex environment,” said Gobalsamy.
“Through an unwavering commitment to our core values – ‘Be safe’, ‘Respect and grow’, ‘Achieve excellence together’, and ‘Do the right thing’, Omnia empowers growth in mining for long-term stakeholder value creation underpinned by strong ESG principles”
Integrity-driven innovation
Ralf Hennecke, MD of BME, noted that this year’s theme appropriately reflected modern mining industry challenges and opportunities, while also closely aligning with the company’s philosophy.
“I am excited to see so many professionals across the mining value chain in attendance today,” said Hennecke.
He said that BME believed that innovation must be responsible, fit-for-purpose and founded on integrity. “Through collaboration, innovation and trust, we are making mining safer, more sustainable and enhancing its competitiveness for today and generations to come,” he added.
He said that this ethos also underpinned BME’s global growth strategy while safeguarding its core African business by supplying cutting-edge mine-to-metal solutions supported by blasting and metallurgical expertise.
“BME believes that navigating a volatile macro environment requires a strategy built on uncompromised basics,” he said. “These include an impeccable safety and sustainability track record, quality products and services, supply-chain security and, just importantly, trust in our people.”
Integrating pit to plant with AI
BME officially announced its partnership with global AI technology leader Strayos to launch a new software suite called XPLOSMART – a key highlight of the summit.
This strategic alliance combines BME’s premium blasting expertise with Strayos’ advanced AI and image processing capabilities to deliver a next-generation, AI-enabled solution for mine-to-mill optimisation.
While presenting on behalf of Ravi Sahu, CEO of Strayos, Nishen Hariparsad, BME’s General Manager of Technology & Marketing, noted that although most mines have already embraced digitalisation, many important decisions are still made offline using the available information.
“AI has enabled us to close this loop and derive value from rich data already generated in the industry through available and proven technology, such as rugged sensors and embedded software.”
He explained that Strayos replaced static dashboards with living systems. Based on a single source of truth platform, they observed, learnt, and adjusted to continuously improve safety, productivity, and quality.
He underscored that autonomy relied on accurate real-time understanding of the operating environment, with Strayos achieving this by connecting the information obtained from photogrammetry, blast models, muck piles and plant monitoring.
“Each stage of the mining process informs the next and vice versa, reducing energy consumption, mitigating waste and increasing productivity,” he explained. “By prioritising transparency and auditability right from the outset, every model is traceable and can be validated and refined, ensuring that engineers are always in control.”
As a leader in the field of AI, Strayos continually invests and grows in this sector, which aligns with BME’s value proposition of maintaining a leadership position in innovation.
The next step in blasting innovation
Further, Thomas Gustavsson, CEO of Hypex Bio, shared insights on how the company’s partnership with BME aimed to accelerate the uptake of hydrogen peroxide-based emulsions (HPE) in key markets, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by up to 90% and providing many operational benefits.
“Blasting with ammonium nitrate emulsions (ANE) presents risks that industry has only been able to mitigate because a suitable substitute did not exist,” he said.
He explained that high-energy HPE rapidly decomposed into water and oxygen when detonated, creating a large volume of superheated steam and expanding gas that fractured rock.
“HPE does not emit nitrogen oxide (NOx) fumes and eliminates nitrate and ammonia leaching risks, providing potential savings in water treatment and ventilation, as well as faster re-entry times,” he said, adding that HPE was also less energy-intensive to manufacture, reducing the mining supply chain carbon footprint.
Gustavsson said that mines could also easily convert to HPE without having to change blast designs or detonator types, undertaking charging in the same way they would with ANE.
BME and Hypex Bio have recently expanded their collaboration beyond Canada by launching an infrastructure and product development program targeting the Southern African Development Community (SADC) market. This initiative will progressively introduce the world’s first commercially available HPEs to the SADC mining sector for a range of blasting applications.
Disruptive mining technology
Meanwhile, during a panel discussion on disruptive technology in the mining industry which was moderated by Hariparsad, Gustavsson said that it was imperative that innovation could be deployed quickly and cost-effectively by mines to accelerate uptake.
Scott Scovira, Global Manager: Blasting Science and Engineering at BME, said that disruptive technologies had to be fit-for-purpose which was achieved by collaborating with new and prospective customers to find solutions to their problems.
Additionally, Dr Alan Tordoir, Director: New Mining Technology and Portfolio Integration at Mining 3, said that mines would adopt disruptive technology if they realised their real value. This includes improving efficiency and safety, reducing operating costs, while also addressing sustainability and social license.”
The discussion covered the ways innovation is transforming mining operations, highlighted the practical challenges of implementing new technologies, and emphasised that collaboration plays a key role in fostering responsible and sustainable industry changes, reflecting BME’s core values.
BME demonstrated its expertise in supporting mining clients by making use of integrated blasting solutions enhanced through artificial intelligence, telematics, and other digital technologies. This approach exemplifies Omnia’s commitment to improved efficiency and sustainability through its purpose of ‘innovating to enhance life, together creating a greener future’.
Watch the full recording of the BME Technical Summit 2025 from October 22, where mining experts covered blasting technology, digital solutions, and operational excellence:
