Can you provide an overview of the services Liebherr Mining provides the industry in the southwestern US?

We bring to market equipment used for open-pit mining and the hard-rock sector. We have trucks ranging from the 240-tonne payload to ultra-class trucks, along with a full line of electrified excavators, and our mining dozers.

The US is the second largest opportunity for Liebherr globally from a standpoint of machine consumption. The western US is interesting because of the importance of copper and the continued importance of gold, along with the emerging lithium mining technology. In Arizona, we operate a fleet of ultra-class haul trucks for Asarco. We provide on-site support and help at their manufacturing facilities in the west. NGM also operates a fleet of Liebherr trucks at the Cortez mine.

What is Liebherr’s approach toward integrating new technologies in Arizona and Nevada?

We are working on placing new electrified excavators in these states. We have a 150-tonne excavator and a PR 776 mining dozer in stock in Elko. Customers have requested autonomous mining solutions through our partnership with Hexagon. Our system is an open protocol, meaning we can operate on anyone else’s systems: We can give clients the LIDARs and the radars, and leave the system open so that any other type of autonomous solution can log in and make our units work on their system.

We have also created upgradeable equipment. That was NGM’s requirement: being able to upgrade existing trucks without having to buy new ones. Customers want today’s technology with the ability to upgrade products as improvements can be applied to it. Liebherr’s answer to this challenge is a modular approach, which allows the machines to be energy-type agnostic and drive train agnostic, enabling an upgrade or retrofit on existing equipment to zero-emission drives. You can take a diesel operating haulage truck, and as soon as we have battery technology through our partnership with Fortescue Future Industries and Williams Advanced Engineering, it can be installed on the truck we build today.

Can you expand on Liebherr’s “Zero Emission Mining Program”?

Liebherr’s roadmap is for zero-emissions by 2030, and we believe we are absolutely pioneering zero-emission mining. The initial partnership we have in zero-emission mining is with Fortescue Metals Group. We work with them on developing and supplying mining haul trucks that integrate zero-emission power technologies developed by Fortescue Future Industries and Williams Advanced Engineering into the Liebherr T 264 haul truck. We anticipate that delivery of the first haul trucks in this partnership will happen in the coming two years.

What is the role of OEMs in developing new technologies toward a more sustainable way of mining?

The OEM is responsible for developing the technologies the customers didn’t know they needed. Liebherr is already working towards developing these zero-emission solutions, such as the Trolley Assist System and a hydrogen engine which was recently presented at the Bauma tradeshow in Germany.

How is Liebherr addressing the current industry-wide labor shortage?

Skilled labor is the number one threat to the industry today. The labor pool has shrunk, and there are more technologically advanced products. The landscape of what a technician means to the industry has changed. Mining customers struggle to identify operators. As an employer, Liebherr has an attractive benefits package. The family-owned business is also dedicated to investing in its people. One of the firm’s core values is its employees, we invest in training for our people to continue to grow. From a retention standpoint, automation will be interesting in the coming years: we can operate our dozer via a remote seat, which increases the focus on safety. We hope the more comfortable and safer environment for operators will entice labor to join the industry.

What are Liebherr’s USA division's top priorities in the next two years?

We are fully focused on expanding our capabilities to serve the copper and gold markets and bringing new product offerings to those customers. Long-term, our vision is zero-emission, autonomy, and electrification. Our zero-emission roadmap is 2030, and we are well underway for this to be achieved. Liebherr is the leader in the push toward delivering fossil-free equipment to the industry.