Digging Deep Dialogue 30: Can real-time dust monitoring prevent dust diseases, protect the mines finances and return shareholder value?

Digging Deep (DD) continues it's quest to connect people through technology that saves lives, provides a greater operational return on investments and offers a win-win approach in the mining industry. We find ourselves in Stockport, England, as we are quite intrigued and fascinated by the work that Trolex is doing in real-time dust and silica monitoring across the globe. We are very fortunate enough to spend time with their Managing Director, Steve Holland (SD) and our discussions focus on getting to know him, managing risk safely through real-time dust monitoring, how dust monitoring technology works to protect the mine finances and return shareholder value, the African mining market, and what is on the horizon for Trolex. Let's dig deep and learn more from Steve.

DD: Welcome to the Digging Deep Dialogue, Steve, it’s a pleasure and honor to have you with us. Can you please tell us more about yourself and your role as Managing Director of Trolex?

SH: Its fantastic to talk you, thanks for having me.

So I've been lucky enough to work at Trolex for only 4 of its 60+ years of trading, and as you may or may not know most of the years were spent designing and manufacturing intrinsically safe gas detection systems and more recently world first particulate and dust monitoring equipment.

I'm lucky that people always want to talk to me and I get to take credit for the hard work that everyone at our business puts in, and my job really is help guide the balance of the business between innovation and sustaining our full range of products. For me its all about people, any business that wants to thrive and innovate needs to be able to trust everyone to do their job.

In our industry its certainly very niche and provides endless opportunities to improve, learn and improve, it’s a real privilege but can also be a little overwhelming for everyone.. so I guess that my job really “keep the ship steady” and allow people to innovate.

DD: What is your value proposition to the mining industry and how do early warnings and automated alarms help to manage risk safely through real-time dust monitoring?

SH: We see dust monitoring technology not only as providing a life-saving solution to the mining industry, but also one which can provide sustainability, value and support across the entire industry.

People think Real-time monitoring is all about health regulation and safety, and whilst its an amazing tool for that some of our biggest customers have seen exception ROI in other areas even thought their intent was employee welfare.

As an example Real-time dust monitoring can be utilized in conjunction with the Hierarchies of Controls for the primary reason of elimination or reduction of the risk, but as a secondary learning its easy to begin to understand basic principles like loss of product in manufacturing, poor process timing in construction, process or task “re-visits” for things like drilling and cutting and even time management with things like personal monitors showing unexpected exposures.

Ultimately more data gives the chance to ask more questions… and only be asking questions do you find answers.

DD: Unscheduled halting of operations incurs massive financial losses for the mine, especially if the expected coal reserves are not extracted as per schedule. How does your dust monitoring technology work to protect the mine's finances and return shareholder value?

SH: This is a great question, and one that no-one wants to ask out loud because the commercial impact of real-time warnings could commercially affect a project if they aren’t properly planned. No-one ever wants to say money before health but many people still sadly feel that way.

The great news is that if you approach something like dust or particulate monitoring in the right way it can actually prevent shut downs and down time.

Take for example our Grp1 Atex Air XD, this is used in mines globally to monitor trends in peak coal dust levels, as we know coal dust is highly dangerous, by using Air XD and having an automated ventilation and extraction system, particulate levels can turned on and off as necessary, keeping running cost low and keeping levels well below a dangerous level. The same can be done with dust suppression systems, showing the real time monitoring is so much more than most realize.

DD: There are many underground coal mines in Africa, with the majority of them in South Africa. Do you see the African coal mining industry as an opportunity to deploy your real-time dust monitoring technology?

SH: Absolutely, the African market is still under utilizing technology and innovation in many places in a bid to save cost, whilst different economies have different challenges with budgets we have shown that Real-time monitoring can make a very quick return on investment if utilized correctly.

If you take into consideration the cost of health claims steadily on the rise there is also a very obvious place to start using monitoring to protect both the welfare of workers and provide data in the event of any spurious claims.

DD: In closing, what can we expect from Trolex in the near future? How can people get hold of you and the Trolex team for all your technology offerings?

SH: Well all I’ll say is watch this space, our product evolution is fast as we commit a huge amount of resources to bringing new and exciting developments, we also have a launch of our brand new evolution gas detection equipment “SENTRO X” which will be going into our existing African Mining customers by the end of the year.

You can of course find us at Trolex.com or on social media and our African distributors are always happy to answer questions, they can also all be found on our website.

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