Location
Australia
Canada
Evolution is pursuing efficiencies and innovation in our fleet fuel economy across the business. For example, Cowal’s partnership with Epiroc for electric diamond drilling, Red Lake’s ongoing use of five battery-electric heavy vehicles underground, and our ongoing collaboration in the Electric Mine Consortium to support industry-wide innovation and learning.
These partnerships are revealing benefits in energy and emissions, safety and improved productivity. Diamond drilling generates core, which is logged and sampled, and the assays used by geologists to estimate resources. The Cowal geology team engaged Barminco to utilise two of their Epiroc built Diamec Smart 6m drill rigs for underground diamond drilling. These drill rigs are fully mobile, articulated and, where possible, remotely operated. Being articulated increases drilling time and productivity (20% improvement on penetration rate against older style rigs) and enables faster delivery of data to inform geology and mine plans. These rigs are state-of-the-art and reduce our people’s exposure to hazards associated with manual handling.
These rigs deployed at the Cowal underground will enable learnings to be shared across our other operations to inform drill and asset tenders.

