I bet you a mars bar , none of the KG pit has had any blasting...

I bet you a mars bar , none of the KG pit has had any blasting done. They've just been free digging up until now. Top soil easy to move. Once they got into the overburden. Not so easy digging. Then once they got down to the ore. That dozer and digger would've been scratching like blind chooks into concrete.
It's time consuming and extremely hard on the gear.
Certainly not efficient.
If they think they are going to open that pit up without drilling and blasting, they'll lose more $$.
From my experience. Drilling and blasting is the most expensive part of a mining operation.