Todays AustralianANDREW Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group is...

Todays Australian

ANDREW Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group is planning to use robot dump trucks to mine the whole Solomon project planned for the Pilbara region of Western Australia in an automation rollout that may be bigger than that of rival Rio Tinto.

Rio has been carefully testing automatic trucks since late 2008, but Fortescue has signed an agreement with US giant Caterpillar and its local distributor, Westrac, to have 12 driverless trucks able to carry 200-tonne payloads each working on Solomon by the end of next year.

Last month, Rio said it would double the size of its remote truck trial from five trucks to 10 by April next year, but has revealed no other plans.

If the first stage goes to plan for Fortescue, it will move to 45 trucks mining 120 million tonnes of iron ore a year from Solomon by mid-2015.

"The expected rollout is more than just a trial," incoming Fortescue chief executive Nev Power said yesterday.



Mr Power will take over on July 18 as the company's chief executive from Andrew Forrest, who will become chairman.

Neither Westrac nor Fortescue would put dollar figures to the contract.

Westrac managing director Jim Walker recently told a lunch in Melbourne that a Pilbara truck driver and associated housing, meals and transport cost about $1 million a year.

The announcement means Fortescue is closer to a decision on how it will run its mining fleet for the project.

The mining fleet cost has been left out of the company's $US8.4 billion ($7.85bn) forecast development cost to move from 55 million tonnes of iron ore production a year now to 155 million tonnes from the Solomon and Chichester Ranges operations by mid-2013.

By mid-2015, when Solomon could be running 45 driverless trucks, Fortescue is planning total production of 255 million tonnes a year. Yesterday, a Fortescue spokeswoman said no decision had been made on whether the miner or Westrac would own the fleet of trucks.

The mine would use Caterpillar technology that is being tested in the US. It would be jointly operated by Caterpillar and Westrac.

Rio has been testing robot trucks from Caterpillar's mining truck rival, Komatsu. Rio's trucks can haul 320 tonnes each.