BHP made history last April when it completed the sinking of two shafts at its Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan without explosives. The company used a shaft boring roadheader (SBR) machine, developed by Herrenknecht and based off of tunneling technology, to sink shafts one kilometre deep precisely and without personnel around the excavation area. Subsequent shaft sinking projects have already begun applying the lessons learned from the Jansen project.
Read the full story in CIM Magazine at https://magazine.cim.org/en/technology/a-new-era-in-shaft-sinking-en/.
