Hard working people want their lives improved.
I keep hearing on the mainstream media about the end of the Australian mining boom. So I was curious to see what was happening with steel production numbers.
All statistics from World Steel Association –
first chart 1980-2013 annual production.
Then 2009-Feb2014 monthly production – red M = March 2014
The first quarter 2014 is up over same period in 2013
China 1st qtr 2014 201053
World 1st qtr 2014 404030
China 1st qtr 2013 191745
World 1st qtr 2013 389740
and China in March 2014 produced 70million t.
I am not sure what “boom” is ending but if we can not manage prosperity out of this there is something wrong in our national life.
The capital expenditure driven boom is ending. CapEx spending contributes several times more to GDP than the actual mining. And that differential will only increase as robotics spreads thru mine operations. Essentially, Australian workers will be replaced by imported machines.
The Argyle diamond mine was the first in the world to operate without any underground workers. I understand robotics is spreading rapidly thru iron ore mining.
O/T.
Theconversation has an el nino projection:
“Predicting an El Niño during the March-May period is difficult and it says something for both the improvements in forecasting and, perhaps more importantly, the likely size of this event that an El Niño is being forecast so early in the season.”
But Wait!
“But, as was found in 2012, even very close to summer nothing is certain.”
theconversation.com/are-we-heading-for-a-worrying-super-el-ni-o-26090
Phillip Bradley, agree about CapEx spending resulting in productivity and the introduction of Robotics. Maybe a boom in capEx in mining is reducing but it will not end.
I have found that practices and capital equipment in mining has always been conservative compared to industries that are on small margins. The car industry has been using robotics for sometime. It is rare to see conveyors used in hard rock mines (except for limestone mines). I saw a curved conveyor, fed by a mobile in-pit crusher, go around a village in 1969 in Switzerland. I have seen continuous mobile bucket-wheel excavators being operated remotely as long ago as 1970 in chalk and lignite mines and a few years later at ports recovering coal and iron ore from stockpiles for barge and ship loading. The French have driverless trains in the Paris underground. Automation has huge benefits in quality control, safety, productivity, security, continuous operation etc.
I did not know about Argyle diamond mine. I knew they were one of the first outside the cement industry to use high pressure rolls for very fine crushing (also now used for iron ore in Brazil). However, I thought the first hard rock u/g mine to have no one operating underground was in Sweden.
cementafriend, you are likely right. I see Argyle uses equipment from Sandvik a Swedish company.