Phibion forges ahead in tailings treatment

The Phibion team is not resting on its laurels after the mid-year launch of its autonomous Dart MudMaster mine tailings management system. The award-winning Queensland manufacturer has turned its attention to technology for its amphibious vehicles that will also provide useful information on the nature of operations' tailings. Phibion last week took out the Resources and Energy category at the 2023 Queensland Export Awards. This followed the introduction of its autonomous system as well as continued uptake of its technology in Australia and overseas. The amphibious MudMaster system works to make tailings dams safer and smaller by recovering more water and increasing the land density by up to 20 per cent at a fraction of the cost of traditional filtration systems. "Our mission is to make mining tailings dams safer, smaller and more sustainable," chief executive officer Jacques Janse said. "We believe that we are making the whole mining environment better for everyone - for communities, for the miners themselves, the whole ESG contribution. All of us working for Phibion have a deep belief in leaving the earth in a better state." Mr Janse said the group was continuing to innovate with its latest work. "Our aim is to provide highly valuable information for mining companies about their tailings. And so what we are doing is, in future, we will be presenting information about the tailings that no other companies have access to." Because Phibion's vehicles are certified to travel on the tailings, they can reach areas away from the edges of the storage facilities and provide insight into characteristics such as water content and density. Mr Janse said Phibion's tailings management system had won a market share of about 10 per cent of the world's alumina and bauxite residue sites. "So we're making good traction in that market," he said. "We are just entering the copper market and have great interest from specifically South America in the copper market - Chile, Peru, Brazil. "And with the autonomous machine, we are actually going to target some of our gold customers. "So in the production of gold, quite often you get cyanide that is involved in the process. We were not willing to put people on machines on dams that contain cyanide. "The autonomous machine opens up markets for us to go into gold." Phibion's 2023 Queensland Export Awards gong follows a win in the Environmental Solutions category of the same awards in 2018. This latest award sees the company advance to the Australian Export Awards, to be announced on November 30. Minister for Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries and Minister for Rural Communities Mark Furner (centre) presents the 2023 Queensland Export Awards Resources and Energy award to Phibion global sales manager Ross Hafner, chief executive officer Jacques Janse, information systems and robotic manager David Frazer and assembly technician Hemant Machhi.

Phibion forges ahead in tailings treatment

Industry Queensland

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