The mining sector is moving at a ferocious pace to address pressures such as decarbonisation, labour shortages and falling ore grades.
An industry that was once perhaps slower than others to change is now adopting new technologies and modernisation measures at every level.
From autonomous trucks hauling hundreds of tonnes with no driver at the helm, to drones mapping underground spaces too dangerous for people to enter, the innovations reshaping the sector span everything from the pit to the seabed.
10. Eriez HydroFloat
Company: Eriez
Founded: 1942
HQ: Erie, Pennsylvania, US
CEO: Jaisen Kohmuench
Conventional flotation cells struggle to recover coarse mineral particles, which means a significant amount of value routinely ends up in tailings. The HydroFloat uses a fluidised bed design to recover particles more than twice the size that traditional cells can handle, while cutting ball mill energy consumption by up to 50%, according to Eriez.
It won the Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration's Murray Award for Innovation in 2025, and is now installed across more than 70 operations worldwide, according to Eriez.
BHP commissioned a HydroFloat plant at its Carrapateena copper mine in South Australia in August 2025, hitting performance targets ahead of schedule and lifting site throughput to around 20,000 tonnes per day, according to the Melbourne-based company.
9. Hexagon HxGN MineProtect
Company: Hexagon
Founded: 1992
HQ: Stockholm, Sweden
CEO: Anders Svensson
Collisions between vehicles and workers is one of the most common causes of fatalities in active mines. Hexagon's HxGN MineProtect uses radar, GPS and onboard computing to track every vehicle and person on a mine site in real time, triggering alerts and automated responses when equipment gets too close to a worker or another machine.
It works across mixed fleets including trucks, excavators and light vehicles, and integrates with Hexagon's wider fleet management platform.
The system has been deployed at major operations across Australia, Africa and the Americas.
8. The Metals Company NORI-D
Company: The Metals Company
Founded: 2011
HQ: Vancouver, Canada
CEO: Gerard Barron
The Metals Company is pursuing polymetallic nodules on the Pacific seabed, including naturally occurring rocks containing nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese, via its NORI-D project in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico.
A seafloor collector vehicle gathers the nodules and pumps them to a surface vessel, with multiple trials now completed.
The company applied for a commercial exploitation licence with the International Seabed Authority in 2024, with commercial operations planned for the late 2020s, although the project faces ongoing environmental scrutiny over its impact on seafloor ecosystems.
7. Emesent Hovermap
Company: Emesent
Founded: 2018
HQ: Brisbane, Australia
CEO: Charles Miller
Mapping a freshly blasted underground stope traditionally used to mean sending someone into a potentially unstable void, Emesent's Hovermap unit mounts on a drone and navigates autonomously, using its own positioning system and requiring no GPS signal and no pilot.
It captures detailed 3D point clouds that feed directly into standard mining software, so a single surveyor can have results in their hands within minutes of launching.
More than 200 mines use Hovermap globally, and the system is capable of cutting stope reconciliation time by up to 75% compared to conventional methods, according to Emesent.
6. ABB underground trolley assist
Company: ABB
Founded: 1988
HQ: Zurich, Switzerland
CEO: Morten Wierod
Battery-electric trucks struggle with repeated heavy climbs up steep underground ramps, because the level of drain on the battery is so high. ABB's catenary system feeds power directly to the truck via a roof-mounted pantograph on the ramp, preserving battery charge for the rest of the cycle and regenerating it on the descent.
In April 2024, ABB, Epiroc and Boliden demonstrated the world's first battery-electric underground truck trolley system on an 800-metre test track at Boliden's Kristineberg mine in Sweden, on a 13% incline.
Boliden has since ordered four Epiroc trolley trucks for a planned full 5km system at its Rävliden mine.
5. TOMRA XRT ore sorting
Company: TOMRA
Founded: 1972
HQ: Asker, Norway
CEO: Tove Andersen
As ore grades decline, mines are forced to spend increasing amounts of energy processing rock that contains very little of value. TOMRA's X-ray transmission sorters scan each piece of rock individually on a conveyor belt, detecting density differences between mineralised material and waste. It then uses air jets to eject the waste before it reaches the mill.
At EQ Resources' Mt Carbine tungsten mine in Queensland, TOMRA's sorters separate the tungsten-bearing ore from waste rock so cleanly that the waste can be sold as construction aggregate, meaning the mine makes money from material it would otherwise have paid to dispose of.
At Eloro Resources' Iska Iska project in Bolivia, XRT testing demonstrated the potential to reject large volumes of sub-grade material, unlocking ore blocks that would otherwise have been cost-ineffective to process.
4. Epiroc SmartROC D65
Company: Epiroc
Founded: 2018
HQ: Stockholm, Sweden
CEO: Helena Hedblom
Rotary blasthole drilling has historically required an operator in the cab for every rig during every shift. Epiroc's SmartROC D65 executes complete drill patterns autonomously using GNSS positioning and an onboard rod handling system, with no one on board or in direct line of sight.
A remote supervisor can monitor multiple rigs simultaneously from a single control panel. In September 2025, Epiroc and Luck Stone deployed the first fully autonomous SmartROC D65 in the US which was also the first autonomous surface drill delivered to the quarry market anywhere in the world.
Both companies have committed to publishing performance data from the deployment.
3. Sandvik TH665iB
Company: Sandvik
Founded: 1862
HQ: Stockholm, Sweden
CEO: Stefan Widing
Underground mining runs on diesel, and diesel underground produces build-ups of heat and fumes. As a result, ventilation infrastructure can end up accounting for nearly half a mine's total energy consumption.
Sandvik's TH665iB is a 65-tonne battery-electric underground haul truck that produces zero exhaust emissions, much less heat and considerably less noise than a diesel equivalent, reducing the ventilation load substantially. The battery system supports hot-swap capability to keep trucks in production, rather than waiting on a charge.
In Q2 2025, South32 placed Sandvik's largest-ever battery-electric fleet order, covering TH665iB trucks alongside battery-electric drills, bolters and loaders, with deliveries running from late 2026 through to 2030.
The truck is also running at Eldorado Gold's Lamaque complex in Quebec, where early deployments have already prompted the mine to expand its battery-electric fleet.
2. Fortescue battery-electric locomotive
Company: Fortescue
Founded: 2003
HQ: Perth, Australia
CEO: Dino Otranto
Fortescue added two battery-electric locomotives to its Pilbara iron ore fleet in 2025, built by Progress Rail, a Caterpillar subsidiary.
Each carries a 14.5 MWh battery pack that Fortescue says is among the largest land-mobile batteries ever built, and the trains haul loads of up to 40,000 tonnes across hundreds of kilometres of remote Western Australia.
On the loaded downhill run to port, the locomotives recover between 40 and 60% of their charge through regenerative braking, with the rest topped up at port using renewable power from Fortescue's Pilbara Energy Connect grid.
Together the two units are expected to cut diesel consumption by around one million litres a year, and they are the first of 70 planned battery-electric locomotives set to replace Fortescue's entire Pilbara diesel fleet by 2030.
1. Komatsu FrontRunner AHS
Company: Komatsu
Founded: 1921
HQ: Tokyo, Japan
CEO: Takuya Imayoshi
Autonomous haulage in surface mining has been running commercially since 2008, when Komatsu deployed the world's first autonomous truck system at Codelco's Gaby copper mine in Chile.
In April 2026, Komatsu commissioned its 1,000th autonomous ultra-class haul truck, the 930E-5AT which has a 290-tonne payload, at Barrick's Nevada Gold Mines. Customers have collectively moved more than 11.5 billion tonnes of material using the system, at a rate exceeding six million tonnes per day, according to Komatsu.
FrontRunner combines Komatsu's electric drive trucks with its DISPATCH fleet management platform, running around the clock across sites in North America, South America, Australia and Europe.
Mines using the system have recorded a 40% improvement in tyre and brake life on average, alongside a 13% reduction in overall maintenance costs, according to Komatsu. The company also calculated the system generated around US$2.4bn in social and economic impact globally in 2024.
