Breaking Ground: The Story Behind Tribe Tech's First Autonomous Drill Rig

In this episode, we chat with Charlie King, CEO of Tribe Tech who are a disruptive developer and manufacturer of autonomous mining equipment established in 2019 in Western Australia and has since established a headquarters and manufacturing facility in Northern Ireland.

Charlie is a highly experienced manager with over 15 years of commercial and operations experience in mineral exploration working for three of the biggest drilling companies in Western Australia. As the CEO of Tribe Tech, he shares what the company has achieved in a short space of time and how their automated equipment can benefit company's exploration activities.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Tribe Tech was established in 2019 in Western Australia and has since expanded to Northern Ireland. The company specialises in developing and manufacturing autonomous mining equipment, with a focus on improving exploration activities in the mining industry.
• Tribe Tech took on the challenge of designing autonomous mining equipment from the ground up, aiming to create machines that operate without the need for human operators. This approach required significant development hours and a unique perspective on automation in the mining sector.
• Despite facing challenges and skepticism from the industry, Tribe Tech has achieved significant milestones, including securing contracts with major players like Anglo American and Major Drilling. The company's success is evident in its 100% tender success rate and growing demand for its autonomous equipment.
• Tribe Tech's focus for the next 12 months includes commercializing existing products, improving systems quality and performance, and aiming to become a self-generating profitable business. The company plans to continue solving industry challenges and driving innovation in the mining sector.

BEST MOMENTS

"I thought the return on investment for purchases of our equipment would be the saving in costs of personnel. But the way we believe our IP functions is actually about getting more bit on bottom a whole time drilling during a shift." 

"We see our technology as helping enable a lot of that and the kind of real digital transition and trends that are happening within the sector." 

"We want to continue to find areas where the sector and the big players maybe have neglected a niche. Maybe it's too small a market segment for them to take on, or they view the challenge as too big." -

"We've worked through to get to a point where our first autonomous sampling system commercial model has been deployed out for Anglo-American in South Africa."

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Mail:        rob@mining-international.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-tyson-3a26a68/

X:              https://twitter.com/MiningRobTyson 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DigDeepTheMiningPodcast 

Web:        http://www.mining-international.org

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tribe-tech-group/

ABOUT THE HOST

Rob Tyson is the Founder and Director of Mining International Ltd, a leading global recruitment and headhunting consultancy based in the UK specialising in all areas of mining across the globe from first-world to third-world countries from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. We source, headhunt, and discover new and top talent through a targeted approach and sea