Eltirus founder Steve Franklin explains how innovation is being highlighted across quarries, and what it means for the future of the industry.
What was the most important lesson from 2024?
Take nothing for granted, always work to find out new ways of doing things and adding value for clients.
What surprised you about 2024?
That both the IOQ conference in Rotorua earlier in the year and the IQA conference in Adelaide both focused on innovation as their theme.
I think that innovation is a greater focus now than it has been in a while. With rising costs and softening sales in some quarters, doing more with less (or using new approaches or technology) makes a lot of sense and is increasingly important to companies large and small.
What do you think is the biggest issue facing the quarrying industry?
We need to ensure that school leavers know about our industry, know that it is an interesting industry and somewhere they can make a career. We must get beyond the simplistic “turning big rocks into small ones” nullification of what we do and show people that there is something to know about the industry and that it is essential to the community.
How is your team helping to solve this problem?
Our efforts include outreach to school children (hats off to Siri Schlebaum, one of our senior mining engineers for her work in this area), magazine articles, presentations and posts and working wherever we can to increase the technical understanding of quarry resource extraction.
What are you looking forward to in 2025?
A renewed focus on innovation across the industry – we believe that there is a lot of opportunity to do things differently and improve productivity.
What innovations are you most excited by?
We have been involved with whole of site and stockpile drone survey since 2016 and during that time have seen many platforms come and go, with one in particular rising to become the default across the industry. More recently, we have seen the rise of a competing platform, Strayos, which is built for quarries from the ground up and has a wide range of AI-based tools that just aren’t found in any other platform. Examples include Haulroad AI that can analyse road width, grade and berm heights automatically. It can also track material from blast to primary crusher to optimise fragmentation and throughout and reduce drill and blast costs.
The second technology we are excited about is resource optimisation. By this I mean, software that can look at the cost and value of each part of the resource and then determine that correct extraction sequence to meet production targets and maximise net present value – this takes much of the guesswork out of longer-term quarry planning and is incredibly valuable.
How are you helping to grow the industry?
My personal focus is on giving back to the industry. I am lucky to have travelled extensively and been involved in many different operations and situations and I think it is important to share that knowledge. This includes things like mentoring, speaking at conferences, writing monthly articles for Quarry, LinkedIn posts and the like.
What does your company have planned for 2025?
A primary focus for us this year is the rollout of our quarry reporting system, Enable. Having a simple, easy to use system that can show users what their targets are and whether they are meeting them or not is critical to any business that wants to improve productivity and reduce costs.
We are seeing tremendous interest in this solution across Australia and the US and look forward to bringing on several new clients this year.
How do you think the industry will change over 2025?
A focus on innovation, more community outreach and consolidation. •
For more information, visit eltirus.com
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