Hanwha Corporation Accelerates Its Global Mining Business

Hanwha welcomed visitors to its booth at AIMEX 2019

Hanwha Corporation is kicking into high gear to keep up with a growing global demand for its mining products. Hanwha recently signed a USD 8.3 million contract to supply an Indonesian mining company with industrial explosives. This year alone, the company posted six orders of USD 22.3 million and expects total overseas sales to exceed USD 165 million by Q4 2019. To put things in perspective, in terms of sales, Hanwha’s mining business has grown elevenfold since 2014 when the company began selling its products internationally.

Hanwha’s global mining business is doing particularly well in Australia and Indonesia. Low Density Explosives (LDE) Corporation Australia was worth USD 19 million when it was acquired by Hanwha in 2015. This year, LDE’s sales are expected to grow by USD 66-74.2 million. This is due to local mining companies turning to Hanwha products through word-of-mouth referrals that Hanwha’s blasting efficiency reduces operational costs.

In 2016, LDE Corporation Australia signed a five-year extension contract to manufacture industrial explosives and supply them to Whitehaven Coal, an Australian mining company. LDE Corporation Australia also signed a contract to provide Glencore, a British-Swiss commodity and mining company, with mining services until 2020.

In response to strong local demand in Western Australia, Hanwha is constructing an industrial explosives manufacturing facility that will have the capacity to produce 50,000 tons annually. This will be Hanwha’s third 50,000-ton production facility built in Australia. Once the latest production facility is completed in 2020, Hanwha will have the combined capacity to produce at least 150,000 tons of industrial explosives annually in Australia alone. This is double the production capacity of all Hanwha’s plants in Korea combined.

Growth in Indonesia is also strong. In 2012, after Hanwha began supplying non-electrical detonators to PT Dahana, Indonesia’s state-run gunpowder company, it opened a local subsidiary in 2013 and then another in 2014. Since then, Hanwha has remained active in the local mining industry, providing high quality mining products and services to the Indonesian market. Hanwha has built a production facility capable of producing 23,000 tons of industrial explosives annually.

At the beginning of 2019, Hanwha began construction on a tube production plant in Indonesia to provide the local market with a consistent supply of high-quality priming tubes. Priming tubes are the main components in detonators that ignite gunpowder.

Hanwha currently has more than USD 57.8 million in orders in Indonesia. It expects to grow to more than USD 90.8 million in orders by 2025.

From August 27 to 29, 2019, Hanwha attended AIMEX (Asia Pacific’s International Mining Exhibition), an annual mining trade show held in Sydney, Australia, for the last 50 years. This was the first time Hanwha displayed its products to an international audience.

AIMEX 2019 was organized jointly by five major Australian mining companies including Hanwha customers Glencore and Whitehaven Coal. More than 500 companies had booths at the exhibition, and more than 6,000 people attended.

The products Hanwha showcased at AIMEX 2019 included the Hanwha Electronic Blasting System (HEBS) that uses the newly developed Hytronic 2 electronic detonator. Hanwha also introduced its XLOAD, an eco-friendly bulk emulsion explosive and a prime example of Hanwha’s superior product quality.

At its AIMEX booth, Hanwha offered visitors a VR tour to showcase its advanced technology and product quality. The virtual tour took visitors around Hanwha’s manufacturing plant in Boeun, Korea, and provided an up-close look at electronic detonator production and product testing.

Hanwha Corporation produces electronic detonators at its automated production facility in Boeun, Korea

Hanwha produces automated Hytronic 2 detonators on automated lines at its Boeun plant. The company is confident it will show the efficiency of the Hytronic 2 to the Australian market known to have many large mines.

Due to the high cost of renting equipment and labor, more efficient blasting work is becoming increasingly important. For large-scale mining operations or international mining companies seeking to reduce the time to extract minerals, Hytronic 2 can reduce the number of times a site needs to be blasted, thereby greatly reducing mining costs.

In recent efficiency tests conducted by KIDECO in Indonesia, the Hytronic 2, when compared to non-electronic detonators, proved to have better crushing power with less vibrations and shorter excavation time.

Additionally, Hanwha’s mining products stand apart from the others on the market because they release a lower amount of toxic fumes during blasting. The release of toxic gas and fumes during mining is a constant concern for miners and is closely monitored by the Australian government, local communities, and environmental groups.

Health and safety are top priorities for Hanwha and they are why the company continuously works to improve its products to become even more efficient and safer during blasting. For Hanwha, product excellence is determined by the benefit it can provide to its users and the environment.

Hanwha has been active in Australia and Indonesia since it first entered the global mining market in 2014. Currently, the market is growing at a rate of 2.1%, or USD 15 billion, annually. The market for electronic detonators is growing by more than 10% annually as newer, more efficient products are replacing older electronic and non-electronic detonators.

Hanwha plans to expand its global mining business footprint by entering the US and Chilean markets with competitive pricing as it continues to reduce costs without compromising on quality.

“We are currently one of the top 10 global mining companies,” says a Hanwha spokesperson. “But we’re going to narrow the gap between us and our higher ranked competitors and then take a great leap forward with higher product quality and innovations using our advanced blasting systems and state-of-the-art production facilities.”