Mass Blasting

Over the years, we have been perfecting a method which enables us to blast a stope in its entirety. With suitable orebody parameters, we have been able to load the entire stope and using electronic blasting caps, blast the entire stope as a “one-shot wonder”.

 

For a mass blast, the raise is typically no longer than 100 meters long and thin enough that the swell fits in the same volume as the raise and undercut combined, as this is used as the void. Manroc has been very successful at mining orebodies with widths as narrow as 1 metre, while maintaining a very desirable dilution, which is in most cases much better than the dilution obtained by conventionally drilled stopes.

 

Manroc’s mass blast stope design offers several advantages. Less development, specifically less waste development, offers substantial cost savings. The stope being blasted all at once means it will take less time to get the ore on the ground. Additionally, there will be only the one blast clearance as opposed to several throughout the blasting of the stope.

 

Moving forward, there have been significant advancements in wireless blasting technologies that allow for multiple blasts within a single, fully-loaded stope. This technology eliminates the limitations for lower-access only stopes, yielding even more costs savings.