In a first for South African mining, Gold One’s Modder East mine has rolled out an innovative infrastructure to use emulsion explosives for all 70 of its underground narrow-reef stope panels, as part of its strategy to reduce its cost per ton mined.

Delivering high-quality bulk emulsion explosive to a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean – and ensuing problem-free blasting for a two-year project – has proved BME’s ability to design and manufacture a safe and reliable product suited to the most demanding conditions.

It is well known that good blast design ensures an effective distribution of powder that improves blast results and reduces drilling and blasting costs. Now, through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones), global positioning systems (GPS) and three-dimensional (3D) photogrammetric software, the field of blast design has been taken another step forward.

Bulk emulsion explosives have come a long way since BME introduced double-salt – ammonium nitrate and calcium nitrate (AN/CN) – cold emulsion products into South Africa over 30 years ago.

In another record blast for BME’s AXXIS digital initiation system, Omnia Subsidiary Advanced Initiating Systems (AIS) successfully blasted 4,485 detonators in a coal mine in Australia’s north-eastern state of Queensland.

Umesh Chhika, general manager for Asia Pacific and strategic projects at BME, said the company has been engaged to provide electronic detonation systems and related technical advice to ensure low-vibration blasting in the 35 metre-deep box cut, from which three more rail tunnels will be developed.

BME’s 23rd annual drilling and blasting conference is set to take place on the 12th of November 2015 at the CSIR in Pretoria.