CEMI speeds up mine construction: Rio Tinto invests in $10-million research effort.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: SUDBURY

A $10-million investment in one of Sudbury's major mining research nodes by Rio Tinto in early December may well benefit other mining operations in Sudbury and around the North, according to project leaders.

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The U.K.-based company's partnership with the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) will target the high-speed construction and development of underground mines and the development of ground support systems.

As the company seeks to rapidly move away from open pits to these new underground environments, Rio Tinto will focus on its own mechanized tunnelling and shaft sinking systems, whose spinoff issues are common across many Sudbury-area projects, said CEMI president and CEO Peter Kaiser.

"While this is a real game-changing technology that's developing, we still need to do drill and blast conventional advances, and that has to happen at a higher speed too," said Kaiser.

"That of course is of interest to us, whether it's for developing the Victoria (project) for Quadra FNX, developing Totten for Vale Inco, so many of our mines would benefit hugely So there's a win-win situation where we're helping (Rio Tinto), but by helping them, there are going to be spinoff benefits."

Although CEMTs approach to research involves drawing upon resources from all over the world, the Rio Tinto project will also stand to provide Northern Ontario's small businesses with any number of opportunities. This could be in additional research, sensing or monitoring technology, data gathering products, or any number of other related products and services, he added. The project will involve full-scale, real-world testing at Rio Tinto's various global operations, beginning in 2012 at its Northparkes copper and gold mine in New South Wales, Australia. It's an approach also being adopted by CEMI, which now has a policy of using mines as living geo-science laboratories, or "deep mine observatories" of sorts.

This means that the various underground mines of the North - Creighton, Nickel Rim, Kidd - may one day be able to act as research test spaces, with the type of work depending on the unique properties of each mine.

This makes the CEMI centre the fifth such long-term research centre established by Rio Tinto worldwide, with others in Sydney...