The market size of smart mines will reach 67 billion yuan in 2025
Beijing News (Reporter Zhang Jianlin) The global mining industry is undergoing a profound digital revolution. Recently, Yao Huajun, former director of the Science and Technology Development Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources, said at the 2025 Mine Intelligence and Mine Technology Exchange Event hosted by the Mining Media Integration Professional Committee of the China Industry Newspaper Association that my country, as a major producer and consumer of mineral resources, has deeply integrated mineral resource development and utilization technologies with new generation information technology under the multiple forces of policy empowerment, technological breakthroughs and market drive, and smart mine construction has ushered in a historic opportunity.
In April last year, my country issued the “Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Construction of Intelligent Mines and Promoting the Safety Development of Mines”, which clearly required that by 2026, the proportion of intelligent coal mine production capacity nationwide will be no less than 60%, the replacement rate of robots in dangerous positions will exceed 30%, and the number of underground workers will be reduced by more than 10%.
Yao Huajun said that driven by the dual wheels of policy and market, my country’s smart mine construction has made breakthrough progress. Data shows that by September 2024, 1,642 intelligent mining faces will be built nationwide, 2,640 robots and 1,328 unmanned vehicles will be used, and 17,000 fixed positions will be unmanned; open-pit unmanned driving and underground 5G private networks have entered the “quasi-mature stage”. For example, Caojiatan Coal Mine of the State Energy Group has further improved its coal mining efficiency through the “5G+edge computing” solution.
According to the “2025 Smart Mine Blue Book”, the market size of smart mines will reach 67 billion yuan in 2025 and exceed 120 billion yuan in 2035; by 2030, the total market size of smart coal mines and non-coal mines is expected to exceed 2.3 trillion yuan.
“Although the current achievements in the intelligence of mines are remarkable, deep-seated contradictions are still prominent.” Yao Huajun believes that the technical adaptability is insufficient, and cutting-edge technologies such as transparent geology and digital twins are still in the climbing stage. At the same time, small and medium-sized enterprises are facing transformation difficulties. Large projects with a value of more than 5 million yuan only account for 28.1%. Due to limited funds, small and medium-sized mines focus more on hardware procurement and have weak software customization capabilities. In addition, there is a gap in operation and maintenance talents, and the supply-demand ratio of intelligent engineers is as high as 1:4.3. Some companies are facing the dilemma of “having equipment but no doctors”.