Dodgy Industrial automation hardware marketed for use on mine sites has been nominated as a risk to workers by the Queensland Coal Inspectorate.

The Inspectorate is part of Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) which says it has been made aware the allegedly counterfeit and ‘grey market’ Programmable Logic Controller hardware may be in use on mine sites.

The threat was highlighted when a PLC was disabled permanently at a Queensland mine by a firmware update due to a serial number mismatch. 

The manufacturer advised that the firmware identified the PLC as counterfeit.

Related: RSHQ points the finger at serious mine safety issue

RSHQ notes that systems at Queensland mines which may rely on PLC hardware include automated gas-monitoring and other critical automated processes.

The hardware was also not easily identified by inspection as only the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) could confirm if it was counterfeit, RSHQ said.

Grey market hardware is also likely to be less reliable and more likely to be locked out if an upgrade was attempted.

This resulted in the device becoming unusable and posed further risk, as they were often used in safety-critical monitoring and control applications said RSHQ.

RSHQ also noted that legislation imposed obligations on coal mine operators, site senior executives, designers, manufacturers, importers, suppliers of plant, contractors and others to ensure the risk to persons from the use of equipment was as low as reasonably achievable.

There were three recommendations coming out of the investigation.

They included ensuring PLC hardware was sourced from authorised distributors; considering the risk of operating existing hardware of unknown origin or which may not have been supplied by authorised distributors and keeping in contact with the PLC supplier for more information on hardware.

‘Grey market’ refers to an unofficial market in goods that have not been obtained from an official supplier.