Chinese autonomous surface mining equipment developer EACON Mining has secured its first iron ore project, to automate operations at the Taihe Iron Mine in the Hunan region of China. This allows EACON to expand its footprint from coal, aggregate, and gold mining into the iron ore sector.

EACON’s OEM-agnostic autonomous haulage solution, ORCASTRA, features a distributed architecture designed to offer greater flexibility for diverse open-pit mining environments, including more complex and challenging scenarios.

The Taihe project will automate 6 SANY’s electric mining trucks, with a payload capacity of 70 tons. This is the first phase of the mine’s automation, with plans for a full site rollout following successful implementation.

The Taihe mine poses challenges, particularly in its crusher zones and loading area. The autonomy trucks have to share one crusher pocket and loading area with crewed trucks. And the limited space in these areas leads to overlapping paths and complex traffic flows.

EACON will provide ORCASTRA for the fleet of SANY electric trucks, each equipped with drive-by-wire systems per EACON’s requirements and standards. Alongside the onboard ORCASTRA pilot, EACON will deploy its fleet management system, ORCASTRA Conductor and its crewed equipment & vehicle system, ORCASTRA Crew. ORCASTRA Conductor will also schedule the charging cycles of electric trucks.