Aqura Technologies matched Talison Lithium with the most suitable private wireless network by asking a simple question.
The first 4G private network in the global resources industry was born in Western Australia at a Rio Tinto mine.
Aqura Technologies managing director Alan Seery experienced it when he worked as Rio Tinto’s infrastructure and communications strategy principal.
“We first went live in 2013,” Seery told Australian Mining. “Now there’s about 60-plus private networks in Australia. It’s been quite a decade.”
Since July 2017, Seery has worked for Aqura Technologies in a variety of roles, most notably as its managing director since June 2022.
After collaborating with a range of miners and enterprises to introduce private 4G and 5G across Australia, Aqura Technologies is turning its focus to support the broader mining sector on its digitisation journey.
“The complexity and cost of private 4G and 5G technology has come down significantly as the ecosystem matures and there’s more vendors in the market. This, and the vastly expanded number of supported use cases, is making it more cost effective for miners to implement,” Seery said.
A mining company that understands this is Talison Lithium, which engaged Aqura Technologies in October 2022 to support a significant private wireless network uplift and application integrations for its Greenbushes lithium operation in WA.
Talison saw a need to invest in a major connectivity upgrade as Greenbushes’ mobile mining fleet was planned for a significant expansion and remote drilling operations were on the horizon.
“Aqura is currently delivering a site wireless network using a mix of private 4G, point-to-point, and point-to-multipoint technologies,” Talison Lithium operational technology manager Adam Radics told Australian Mining.
“We are currently working towards the second phase of the project that adds some additional capacity and coverage. Aqura has been organised and disciplined in their process, following a well-engineered delivery methodology, while also being flexible and agile enough to cope with change.”
Talison’s new private wireless network was made fit for purpose and was designed for current and future requirement and use cases. Seery said this was made possible by asking questions outside the technology.
“After introductions via a partner company and after winning the commercial tender process, our relationship has just grown and flourished,” he said.
“A huge factor to the success of the relationship with Talison was when we stopped talking about the technology and we started to understand, ‘What do you want to do?’, while everybody else was asking them what network they thought they needed, what piece of tech equipment, and how many.”
“We also asked Talison about their vision, where they are currently, and where they would like to be. That was the key conversation.”
While Aqura and Talison are in the early stages of their partnership, benefits are already standing out for the lithium miner.
“Talison has set some significant production expansion targets, and we are confident our new communications infrastructure, and the systems it enables, will support us to meet those targets,” Radics said.
“There are further systems and improvements that have, until now, not progressed as they weren’t technically feasible nor financially viable. This new shared private 4G infrastructure is an enabler for those projects to now come to reality.”
The success of the project so far is a product of Aqura and Talison working collaboratively to understand what Talison’s business needs were, before then translating that into a technology solution.
“One of the biggest challenges our industry has is defining reliability,” Seery said. “When you don’t know, you install two of everything because, in theory, if one goes down, at least you’re still operating. But that just blows out the budget and the specification around what you need.”
This is where companies with extensive experience like Aqura can help.
“Through nearly a decade working in this space, we know what works and what doesn’t, so we can deliver a very fit-for-purpose network that’s considerably more affordable and effective than what they originally thought they would need,” Seery said.
“Better matching outcomes with the technology is where we excel. That’s the value we bring for those who are embarking on the digitisation journey.”
This feature appears in the December 2023 issue of Australian Mining.
