When it comes to marketing mine safety products and growing a business, MineARC systems is clearly one of the Australian mining industry leaders. MineARC was recently announced as this years 2018 Telstra Western Australian Business of the Year. MineARC systems have been developing mining safety technology designed for mine emergency situations since the late 1990s when Geoff Whittaker and Gerald Ness started their mine refuge chamber manufacturing business after identifying that a range of ‘safe havens’ were not up to task.
MineARC systems provide a safe refuge when evacuation is not an option for mine personnel. The MineARC refuges provide clean air (plus a range of other key survival tools/equipment) and extend survivability for up to several days until a rescue can be achieved
MineARC Marketing Manager Lesley Emery recently said that “Before they (MineARC) came along refuge chambers were essentially just a shipping container and they had no redundancies. It would get very hot, it was a very risky environment for people to stay in for a long period of time.”
Dion Smith, Sales and Marketing Director says “They flipped that on its head. Today, 40,000 people rely on our product day in, day out. It really is a product that, in a bad situation, saves lives.”
Dion went on to add that “The moment one of our chambers was used in an emergency for the first time, it provided justification for the very existence of our business,” says . That chamber saved nine lives. And over the course of the next two decades, MineARC’s technology has gone on to prevent many more deaths around the world.
The Telstra Award Judges judges believed MineARC have effectively set the pace and standard for safety in numerous industries worldwide.
From its’ early days the business has successfully expanded across a range of industries (including underground mining, tunnelling, chemical processing and disaster relief industries) and have had an effective strategy for marketing mine safety products globally. MineARC now engineers, manufactures and supplies refuge chambers and ancillary mining and industrial equipment to operations in over 40 countries and has recently implemented a range IOT options to the product line up.
Long term partnerships with Australasian Mine Safety Journal has also been one of the key strategies that the business used to market their safety products successfully throughout the Australasia region.
Garth Wright of APRS Media recently told AMSJ that “MineARC is a great case study for marketing mine safety products in APAC region and the Telstra Award was well deserved. MineARC have developed a range of focused mine safety marketing campaigns to maintain awareness and promote new product releases to the key audiences at the right time and right place. They are clearly a beacon for the mine safety industry.”
