Gold Fields and ABB pioneer digital mining in remote Chilean desert
Today, gold is one of the most useful metals in the world particularly for the industrial, medical and technology industries, as the precious yellow metal conducts electricity and doesn’t tarnish. ABB is installing its enterprise-grade digital platform ABB Ability™ Genix Industrial Analytics and AI Suite to enable Gold Fields' Salares Norte project in Chile to bring this valuable metal to those industries, in an efficient and sustainable way.
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Press release
Challenge

Gold Fields’ Salares Norte mining project is one the world’s most remote and challenging mining locations: 4,000 meters above sea level in a remote region of the Chilean Atacama Desert which is 1,300km from the Chilean capital of Santiago where the monitoring center for the mine is located.

Solution

Gold Fields partnered with ABB to create one of the most digitally connected mines in the world.
Using ABB’s Genix, Gold Fields is championing intelligent data analytics, aggregating in real time from 25 systems to maximize productivity and sustainability.

Benefits

Gold Fields will gain data insights that drive efficient, sustainable and remote operations.

Gold Fields will be able to monitor the gold and silver mine in the Andes mountains from their Santiago offices, reducing the number of people needed at the actual mine location, thus improving safety.

ABB Ability™ Genix combines the power of industrial analytics and artificial intelligence to integrate 25 engineering, operational and information technology systems across different functional areas, including the mine, processing, geology and exploration, asset management, finance, legal and human resources.

Starting with data capture and integrating cross-functional data, ABB Ability™ Genix connects operational, business and engineering systems. It then collects, contextualizes and converts data through advanced analytics into meaningful information to unlock productivity improvements by driving smart business decisions.

ABB Ability™ Genix will help visualize and analyze all information required to support Gold Fields' reporting and drive its environmental commitments, helping the company to make a world of difference by achieving its vision of becoming the global leader in sustainable gold mining.
Max Combes, Project Director of Gold Fields says...
“Salares Norte deploys a high level of digital industrial software and technology. This is critical to this project due to its remote location – the nearest town being Diego de Almagro, 180km away, the altitude of the project and adverse weather conditions which make site access and fieldwork challenging.” “It demanded a solution for the remote monitoring center in Santiago that could integrate and contextualize information from many systems, including some common to Chile, as well as perform data analytics. ABB is already a proven digital partner and ABB Ability™ Genix will further unlock the power of data at this project.”
Iván Villegas, Hub Product Marketing Manager Automation - South America, ABB says...
"ABB will deliver a comprehensive integrated electrification, automation and digitalization solution at Salares Norte." “ABB Ability™ Genix, set to be fully commissioned in record time, will help Gold Fields to use their data from operations better, by combining it with engineering and information technology data for multi-dimensional decision making.”

ABB has already deployed the ABB Ability™ MineOptimize solution to supply an integrated power and automation system at Salares Norte comprising six electrical rooms and a suite of process and power controls, all under ABB Ability™ System 800xA distributed control system (DCS). These include Power and Process Control Library and Camera Connect (the ABB video system embedded in the control platform for optimized process monitoring). ABB Ability™ Knowledge Manager is also used to manage information production through Plant Information Management System (PIMS), alongside ABB Ability™ Asset Vista Condition Monitoring.

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