Investigation into MinRes rollovers on haul road and mine sites
Driver distraction has emerged as a potential factor in the road train rollovers besetting Mineral Resources since its problematic private haul road opened.
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Driver distraction has emerged as a potential factor in the road train rollovers besetting Mineral Resources since its problematic private haul road opened.
The rollovers, involving MinRes jumbo road trains capable of carrying up to 300 tonnes of iron ore, led to a safety shutdown earlier this year and a huge bill to reinforce the road’s surface.
However, an account of the low speed at which one incident happened may validate MinRes’s suggestions driver error was also at play.
MinRes recorded three rollovers on the haul road and three on mine site roads from August to March, when WA authorities intervened.
Since operations resumed, there have been no incidents reported in the past three months.
In one case, a haul truck was travelling at just 7km/h.
MinRes has tinkered with the cabin design, including with drink holders, in minor changes to road trains that previously operated safely on the company’s now mothballed Koolyanobbing iron ore mines.
The rollover incidents were captured on video monitors installed in the cabs of the jumbo road trains. MinRes declined to comment.
The company is in the final stages of making repairs and upgrades to the 150km-long haul road, at a cost in the region of $230m.
The haul road connects the Ken’s Bore iron ore mine to a trans-shipping berth at the Port of Ashburton, and would have been repaired and upgraded regardless of the rollovers.
Parts of the road were flooded and badly damaged in heavy rain during the cyclone season in the Pilbara. MinRes sold a 49 per cent stake in the haul road to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners last year for $1.3bn.
The company has relied heavily on public roads to get iron ore to port while repairing the haul road.
MinRes blamed a minor downgrade in Onslow Iron production forecasts for 2024-25 on lower-than-expected availability of contractor road trains to haul ore to port. Only 65 trucks were available compared with its working target of 85 to 100.
MinRes mining services boss Mike Grey said the company would reduce its use of third-party trucks and plans to transition to driverless trucking.
Mr Grey conceded the haul road could have been better built from the start but noted the impact of unusually high rainfall. The road is being covered in asphalt and will have hard shoulders and end up wider as a result.
Brad Thompson travelled to the Pilbara as a guest of MinRes.
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Originally published as Investigation into MinRes rollovers on haul road and mine sites
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