The investment arm of US$160 billion Chinese lithium battery maker CATL has backed auto-mining technology company EACON’s latest circa-$55 million equity funding, fuelling the latter’s efforts to build a foothold in the key Australian market.
CATL Capital is said to have led the series D raise by EACON, which has garnered more than $150 million of private funding as it has deployed 1500 autonomous trucks at 20-plus mine and quarry sites over the past 2.5 years.
Western Australia’s Pilbara region, Canada’s Alberta oil sands patch and Antofagasta in northern Chile are leading the mining world’s rollout of massive autonomous vehicles but much faster and broader deployment of smaller autonomous vehicles will make the space more appealing to outside investors including those backing smaller mining companies. Safer and more efficient material extraction will shift the economics of an increasing number of projects in the capital-intensive industry.
Australia-based global contract mining heavyweight Thiess last month formalised an alliance with EACON, which it said could advance its use of “OEM-agnostic autonomous haulage systems”. Thiess is retrofitting trucks with EACON control systems at gold mines around Kalgoorlie in the heart of WA’s eastern goldfields. The sites are operated by Norton Gold Fields, controlled by China’s Zijin Mining.
EACON said it would direct a significant share of the new funding to development of its autonomous haulage platform, “pilot deployments” with partners such as Thiess and Norton, and building sales, support and engineering operations in Australia.
“This funding round reflects strong confidence in EACON’s ability to commercialise its technology,” the company’s co-founder and chair, Zhang Lei, said this week.
“Our focus will be on three key areas: enhancing our hardware and software to develop next-generation systems that perform reliably in harsh conditions and boost productivity; expanding factory-fit autonomous solutions to more truck models, especially in metal mining and international markets; and accelerating overseas deployments by closely integrating our technology with local mining operations.”
As well as CATL Capital, EACON’s latest equity raise was supported by Chinese wide-body dump truck maker Tonly Heavy Industries, technology firms CHC Navigation and Zhongji Innolight Co, tech-focused VC group FG Venture and Falcon Capital unit, Xingqi Fund.
Seven-year-old EACON says its auto-fleet installations to date include five sites with more than 100 trucks each and three with over 200 vehicles. It was the first mining autonomy supplier in China to achieve “scaled commercialisation across coal, metals and aggregates”.
