Pushing the electrification agenda in mining processes makes sense from a financial and operational perspective. Normet recently invested in Lekatech, a Finnish start-up company founded in 2018 to introduce electric hammer technology to the market. The investment brings many benefits to both companies, explain Antti Anttila, Lekatech CEO, and Samu Kukkonen, Technology Director, Normet. Expanding electrification […]
Normet’s Harri Sonninen, Global Manager for Service Products, and Panu Oikkonen, Director of Underground Process Excellence discuss the development of VR technology and digitalisation in the mining and tunnelling industry. Panu Oikkonen So Harri, our topic today is the present and future of VR in mining and tunnelling. Harri Sonninen I think this is going […]
The Hagerbach Test Facility (VSH) in Switzerland is home to the SubSpace Energy Hub. The Hub will transform VSH into a sustainable, CO2 neutral facility to develop underground space usage. Normet has been heavily involved in the project from the beginning, says Ross Dimmock, Vice President Tunnelling, in this interview. Hi Ross. Thanks for taking […]
A small town in central Finland with less than 5,000 inhabitants seems an unlikely place for a world-class underground research facility and advanced business ecosystem, but the Callio FutureMINE project is nonetheless at the cutting edge of mining and tunnelling R&D. Accurate and safe research opportunities Pyhäjärvi lies some 450 km North of Finland’s capital, […]
The topic of sustainability has long since moved sharply into focus for industries and societies around the world. Faced with the looming climate crisis, awareness of sustainable development has come to the fore and made its way into the underground construction industry. ‘Reduced Carbon’ is the new currency in sprayed concrete. Underground equipment is forever […]
We are the Finnish Nacra 17 sailing team. For those new to the world of sailing, the Nacra 17 is a double handed catamaran and used in one of the ten Olympic sailing disciplines. What makes the Nacra 17 rather exciting is threefold: Firstly, Nacra 17 is a foiling catamaran, which means that when the […]
During my studies at the Helsinki University of Technology I took a course on ”The Balanced Scorecard,” which is based on the strategic management tool that links a company’s current actions with its long-term goals. I still remember one famous phrase from that course: “What you measure is what you get” by Robert Kaplan and […]
The people who follow Normet may have noticed that we pride ourselves on being experts in our customers’ underground production processes. Communicating this to our audience aims to let people know that we know the processes that we develop solutions for, but what does it mean for us? Cyclic Process Tunnel excavation is a cyclic […]
In an honest and engineer-type way, the answer to this question is: While I can’t quantify to what exact percentage point of relevance, I can say that digitalisation is very relevant, now and even more so in the future. The underground mining and tunnelling industry are in a state of transition, and digitalisation is underway […]
From Olympic sailing to kite foil racing at Paris 2024 Olympics After two Olympic campaigns sailing the 49erFX doublehanded skiff and representing Finland at the Olympics in Rio in 2016, and Tokyo in 2020, it was time for me to find a new challenge. My teammate for the Tokyo campaign decided to leave her Olympic […]
Despite a daunting timeline set by the Paris Accord, zero-carbon tunnels are within reach if the right solutions are implemented. The tunnelling industry is at a tipping point where sustainability and decarbonisation are at the top of executives’ agendas. To achieve a 1.5°c climate-change target by 2050, the tunnelling industry will need to reduce direct […]
