Fast2Mine CEO and founder Eder Griebeler has lofty goals for expansion of the company after spending a decade building a platform in the highly competitive international mine fleet management system (FMS) software market.
The joint winner of InvestMETS.com’s 2024 Global Mining Technology Award for Best Scale-up says it has more than 80 mines in Brazil, USA, Mexico, Argentina, Guyana and Australia on its client list. Griebeler says, “we are just getting started”. The circa-US$4.5 million of annual revenue being generated has enabled Belo Horizonte-based Fast2Mine to grow its workforce to nearly 100 people by the end of 2024. “The potential for revenue expansion with internationalisation and penetration into [the] tier one [market] is very significant,” he says.
“The expectation for 2025 is to add another 0.5 million dollars of new monthly recurrence by December 2025 – double in size in terms of MRR – and heat up the funnel to reach a turnover of $50 million by the end of 2027.
“Our idea is to [also] start a growth strategy through M&A, buying other companies over a three-year horizon.
“The engine of growth will be continuous investment in technological advances, internationalisation, customer proximity and an uncomplicated business model and solution. We understand that managing a mine needs to be easy and this requires a system that is easy to install, easy to use, easy to integrate, easy to expand and also easy to contract.”
The latter linked to Fast2Mine’s monthly licensing-based business model, which Griebeler says is highly scalable.
He describes the model as “uncomplicated and disruptive” with “expandable technology at low maintenance and implementation costs”. Fast2Mine was a “company made by miners for miners … We understand the customer’s pain in depth”. Customer service was “close and unbureaucratic”.
The past 12 months had seen excellent progress in the company’s expansion beyond its domestic stronghold, where it completed more than 20 project implementations and “consolidated its position as the leader in FMS”. Projects in Mexico (Aura Minerals), Argentina (Mineria Don Nicolas), Guyana (First Bauxite), Australia (Ravenswood Gold) and Liberia and the US (pilots) complement consolidation in Brazil through deployments for the likes of Gerdau, Itaminas, Atlantic Nickel, Norsk Hydro, Kinross, Alcoa, Aura Minerals and ERO Copper.
Griebeler says his team grew from 60 to 100 employees last year alone.
On the technology development front he says FAST2Mine added “important functionalities” for tier one and two operations.
“We added an innovative dynamic allocation module that allows the mine operation to be optimised with a bias towards adherence and compliance with the mining plan.
“The Mineverse mobile platform redefines the way dispatching is operated in mining, bringing dynamism and autonomy to the palm of your hand and allowing you not only to manage equipment but also people.
“Mining Control BI is an analytics platform based on data-lake and AI, where clients can create their own analytics.
“[And] Dynamic Pro is a system that automates all data collection in the field, further reducing human interaction and bringing greater agility and reliability to information collection.”
Fast2Mine also started development of its Mining Control autonomous system in a partnership with Brazil’s largest mining contractor, U&M. “With this partnership FAST2Mine aims to launch an agnostic system in 2025 that can be integrated with any autonomous truck, consolidating its position as the next generation global FMS,” Griebeler says.
Asked about external funding to support execution of the company’s organic and M&A growth plans, Griebeler seemed to rule out third-party investment for now. “FAST2Mine is a bootstrap company and will continue to be so,” he says.
