First Coal 6 Months Ahead of Schedule at South Africa’s First Digital Mine, Exxaro Belfast

What Problem Was Exxaro Trying to Solve?

Indeed, Exxaro designated Belfast as its flagship digital mine. This R3.3 billion greenfields coal mine is located in Mpumalanga, on the last A-grade, high-yield coal deposit in the province. Unlike brownfield mines, where digitalisation means retrofitting technology, Belfast would be built digitally from the ground up. Importantly, a digital twin existed from inception.

The target was ambitious: a 20% improvement in production through digitalisation over five years. This translates to more than R1 billion of additional revenue.

The Vision

The vision is centred on a digital control room providing real-time visibility across the entire value chain, from mine planning through drilling and blasting, load and haul, plant beneficiation, quality, and logistics to the port. Each department head would have the data needed to manage their part of the chain. However, the mine’s technology landscape included multiple disconnected systems, none of which were connected into a coherent whole.

Why This Was Hard to Solve

Building a digital mine from scratch meant designing the information architecture before the mine was operational. Furthermore, defining what every manager needed to see required tracing those requirements back to source systems that were still being commissioned. The data model had to be designed top-down from management needs rather than bottom-up from available data. Additionally, as the mine progressed from early ROM to full production, the digital platform had to grow alongside it.

What Did NxGN Build?

Starting From the Control Room, Working Backwards

NxGN began with management workshops. We sat with every department head and asked the same question: What graphs, widgets, and KPIs do you need to manage your part of the operation?

From those outputs, we worked backwards. The widgets defined the data needed. The data defined the source systems. The source systems defined the integrations. Consequently, the integrations defined the single data model underneath the control room. This top-down approach produced the architectural blueprint for everything that followed.

The MOMS Platform

Subsequently, NxGN deployed its Mine Operations Management System in phases aligned with Belfast’s operational growth. Every discipline moved to electronic data capture with a capture-review-approve-lock workflow from day one of production. As Belfast scaled, we integrated all on-site source systems into the unified data model.

A dedicated Integration Manager role, maintained across three years, kept the data flows operating as the mine’s digital ecosystem grew more complex.

Predictive Yield Optimisation

One of the most valuable elements was a yield optimisation model. This model tracked material from the geological block model through mining, stockpiling, and crushing into the plant. Importantly, it maintained lot-based tracking of tonnage and quality through each stage. As a result, it could recommend optimal plant settings for each batch entering the beneficiation process. The goal was to maximise export yield while minimising variation in product quality, creating a direct link between operational technology and commercial performance.

The Control Room

The control room videowall became the centrepiece of Belfast’s digital mine. It grew to over 30 real-time displays covering monthly production, stripping ratios, mining operations, plant performance, quality metrics, logistics, weather, and safety. Every display traces back to a management need identified in those initial workshops.

Technical detail: Integration architecture

The MOMS platform integrates with AVEVA AMPLA (production management), AVEVA System Platform and OMI (visualisation), Plant Historian (process data), LIMS (laboratory quality), fleet management systems, ThingWorx SIC (six automated material movement endpoints), Spiral (yield optimisation model), RPM Global (mine planning), and weighbridge infrastructure. All data flows into a unified data warehouse designed top-down from control room requirements. The Spiral model uses washability curves and FIFO silo content modelling to predict optimal Relative Density settings. Laboratory results continuously calibrate predictions.

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What Were the Results?

Metric	Result
First coal	Produced 6 months ahead of schedule (September 2019); digital infrastructure operational from day one
Value chain coverage	Full integration from mine plan to port across every operational discipline
Control room	30+ real-time videowall displays designed from management workshop requirements
Data integration	Every operational source system on site connected into a single data model
Yield optimisation	Predictive model recommending optimal plant settings based on lot-tracked material quality
Engagement depth	17 project phases over 6 years; the platform grew as the mine grew

Why First Coal Ahead of Schedule Matters

Belfast produced first coal six months ahead of schedule in September 2019. Importantly, the digitally connected mine infrastructure directly supported this milestone. The control room was operational from the start of production, giving management the real-time visibility Exxaro’s digital mine vision demanded.

Why Top-Down Design Made the Difference

Most digital mine programmes start with the technology and work forward. However, Belfast started from the other end. Specifically, starting from what management needs to see produces a control room that is a coherent view of the entire value chain, not just a collection of dashboards. The 17-phase evolution over six years demonstrates what becomes possible when the architectural blueprint is right from the beginning.