Entering Peruvian mining with full-blown control tower solution

Three years after joining our company, he has paved the way for an entirely new business area with the potential to grow even outside South America: Mining!

The new business area is not exactly mining, but an increasingly more important area within the industry: traffic management systems and control towering. We offer a unique solution that enables mining customers to have 100% real time insights into the locations of trucks, lorries, pickups and busses. In short, the solution includes transport of metals and minerals as well as overseeing road conditions, planning deliveries and finding on-site solutions to various scenarios and making sure that all logistics issues are handled unsurpassed, swiftly, professionally and effectively.

The current major project is in Moquegua, close to Lima in Peru, a tough region in terms of altitude and logistic conditions. Nevertheless, we made a plan, set up and rolled out an operation that enables the mining company to operate 24/7/365 with a minimum of delay.

“Since we started the project in May this year, we have set up routines that enables our customer to run their business and logistic needs with a minimum of negative influence on the local communities. We don’t send trucks through areas with schools and hospitals at the time of day or night, where it might have a negative impact on everyday lives. Planning and executing that with a total of around 3.000 trucks, busses and pickups on a monthly basis is no easy task. But I dare say that we have made a substantial improvement, not least due to the people on the site,” explains Max Monti.

Moving fast at 13 kilometers an hour
“Our trucks drive on roads that start at an altitude of about 1.000 meters and up to 4.600 meters. This is somewhat extreme. The distance they travel is between 40 to 120 kilometers. However, that 40 kilometers drive may take about 3 hours and each trip requires a special escort vehicle that drives in front of the 3 to 6 big trucks and make sure that the road ahead is clear. In addition, we have handled many first aid situations due to car accidents among civilians in local traffic unrelated to the mining,” explains Max Monti.

The locals obviously take a deep interest in the entire operation around the mining project, which sometimes requires a certain level of sensitivity and understanding – especially from the escort vehicles and truck drivers.

Max Monti continues: “With the amount of heavy traffic going back and forth by the main roads, combined with traffic in general, the risk of accidents and mishaps are always present. That is why we started out doing a complete analysis of the regulations and signs on the roads, and we concluded a need of improvement, which was then implemented. This has heavily reduced the number of accidents among the citizens using the roads. Another element we have implemented to make sure that we do our part for road security is that we monitor the speed of all trucks and escort vehicles. That way, the drivers are informed via a tablet, if they are above the accepted speed limit.”

In general, all our employees on the ground at the project work hard to minimize negative impacts to the locals and make sure the logistics is handled in a safe and respected environment.

Our experience and knowhow when it comes to using escort vehicles in other projects around the world has been implemented in our mining logistics and this has definitely helped making the solution as effective as it is.