Karthik Bala, Mining Regional Manager, Resource Industries Sales, Services and Technology, Caterpillar India, speaks on the company’s technological offerings for the mining segment.

The government is giving a lot of thrust to the mining industry. Also, a lot of new players are coming in. How do you look at the market in India?
Caterpillar has been active in India since 1930’s, with our products extensively used in key projects across the country over the decades. We are seeing many changes taking place in the coal mining sector in recent years, particularly with the auctioning of coal blocks for commercial coal mining. Although a majority of these coal blocks are yet to become operational, we feel there is tremendous growth potential in this segment in the years to come.

Caterpillar is closely working with customers to understand their equipment needs. We are trying to guide them into what could be the best mining solution. We are not only talking about machines but end-to-end solutions. We are giving them examples of benchmarking sites so that they can refer to them. From the perspective of the private sector and state-owned enterprises, we think there are a lot of opportunities for growth. The next 10 years will be an important period for mining in India.

Caterpillar of one of the leading players in the construction equipment space. Explain in detail your company’s offering for the mining segment.
At IMME, we have made a point of emphasising our technology-related solutions. We are showcasing our cutting-edge Driver Safety System (DSS). This technology could reduce ‘fatigue-related’ occurrences on mining sites and will significantly improve operator safety while preventing expensive equipment damage and outage due to accidents.

We are also showcasing Cat® MineStar Edge™, Caterpillar’s cutting-edge cloud-based, subscription managed application that creates an operational ecosystem that gives our customers near-real-time visibility to every aspect of their operation. It allows them to efficiently execute their mine plan and deliver optimal quality to the plant and to the surface. Edge makes it possible to measure, manage, analyse, and optimise our customers’ entire operations. The interesting point about the solution is that it is OEM agnostic. It doesn’t have to be Caterpillar equipment; it can work on any manufacturer’s equipment.

The fact that MineStar Edge solution doesn't require extensive infrastructure expenditure from the business makes it an attractive value proposition for our customers. Being a cloud-based solution, it just requires minimum hardware installations to function with any existing infrastructure. With this, data points such as fuel consumption, payload, asset utilisation, etc. is immediately posted into the cloud device, allowing the mine operator or mine owner to monitor how effectively the asset is being used.

In addition, we are also demonstrating our ‘Command for Underground’ solution for underground loaders. This solution allows the mine operator to control up to three loaders from a remote location. Caterpillar’s command for underground solution boosts productivity while improving operator and equipment safety.

Caterpillar also has an Autonomous Haulage System (AHS), which is available for several of our popular large mining trucks. Caterpillar is a global market leader in autonomy and while this solution is yet to be deployed in India, globally, we have around 400 trucks operating autonomously across multiple countries deployed in a range of mineral commodities. More recently, we celebrated our 5 billion tonnes of material being moved with zero incidents autonomously.

Please share some information on CAT Finance.
Cat Financial is the financial arm of Caterpillar Inc., providing financing, equipment protection and aftermarket services to Cat customers. We offer financial solutions that are friendly, with an efficient and speedy process to support a range of customers to expand their business opportunities.

You spoke about automation in mining. How about sustainability in mining?
With nearly a century of sustainable innovation, Caterpillar is uniquely positioned to address a wide range of customer needs on the rapidly evolving pathway to decarbonisation and to help them build a better, more sustainable world. Our remanufacturing and rebuild options deliver multiple sustainability benefits. By returning components at the end of their initial serviceable lives like-new condition, we reduce waste and minimize the need for raw material, energy, and water to produce new parts. Caterpillar parts are designed to withstand numerous rebuild cycles. Our customers can benefit multiple lifecycles of our products as they are made to be rebuilt numerous times because of their unique design.

We offer low-carbon intensity fuels in most of our construction industries’ products allowing for an opportunity to reduce lifecycle emissions. We are focused on supporting sustainable mining with new battery electric and automated equipment options. Caterpillar gas generator sets are being configured to use 100 per cent hydrogen on a design-to-order basis and some commercial sets are configured to operate on natural gas blended with up to 25 per cent hydrogen.

How do you ensure preventive and periodic maintenance and proximity to your customers?
In terms of maintenance, our machines provide so much valuable “performance health” information that our dealer technicians and Caterpillar engineers have access to. Each machine has many sensors that monitor every critical function of the components as well as the entire machine. Real-time monitoring of information is now possible because of technological advancements. We are capable of trending critical machine information and using it to predict an event that will occur using the algorithms that we have developed. Using this information, we can alert the equipment user with valuable insights to facilitate early intervention and allow additional diagnosis, thus minimising costly downtime.

Customer Value Agreements (CVAs) are tailored solutions that Caterpillar dealers offer to our customers depending on their needs and objectives. The maintenance contract is signed between the customer and the dealer, who offers end-to-end services. Our dealers have everything they need to provide best-in-class repairs to suit the entire spectrum of customer needs.

Skilling is a huge challenge in India. How do you go about it?
Caterpillar together our dealers heavily promote Mining Equipment Management (MEM) solutions aimed at upskilling, creating awareness, and showing them what the best practices are in terms of how to maintain mining machines. The maintenance requirements for these machines are a little bit critical fact that the customers have invested so much money in these machines. Together with our dealers, Caterpillar offers workshops for its clients and invites subject-matter specialists to share their wealth of knowledge.

In terms of performance, how was the year 2022 for the company? What are your plans for 2023?
Compared to the previous year, I believe we have rebounded quite nicely. Future growth of the sector is anticipated. We have been manufacturing in India for more than 50 years now, though our equipment has been here much earlier. We have contributed significantly to India’s development along with our dealers for several decades and we hope to contribute to the development of this country for years to come.