Epiroc awards recognize outstanding customer collaboration and innovation

Stockholm, Sweden: Epiroc, a leading productivity and sustainability partner for the mining and construction industries, is recognizing with three annual awards exceptional collaboration with a customer on battery-electric vehicles, a revolutionary automatic bit changer, and an internal program fostering innovation. 

“All the award winners represent the outstanding innovative mindset that is a key to Epiroc’s and our customers’ success,” says Helena Hedblom, Epiroc’s President and CEO. “Throughout the organization, we keep focusing on providing our customers with the best solutions to boost their safety and productivity, while lowering their emissions and total cost of operation. Congratulations to the winners!”

The United in Performance Award honors exceptional customer collaboration. It is presented to a team at Epiroc’s Underground division as well as to customer and strategic partner Assmang Black Rock Mine in South Africa, for their outstanding collaboration to resolve challenges and successfully introduce battery-electric vehicles in a production environment. The award winners are Ivan (Boisy) Phiri, Quintin Sigudla, Don Thompson, Hein Zimmerman, Kishore Jeebodh, and Eeje van Jaarsveld, as well as the outstanding team at the Assmang Black Rock Mine. 

The Inspired by Innovation Award honors Epiroc’s most innovative technical development that has had a proven commercial success. It is presented to a team at Epiroc’s Surface division that developed the Automatic Bit Changer (ABC), a revolutionary product that strengthens safety for operators by replacing manual changing of drill bits on Pit Viper blasthole drill rigs with an automatic solution. ABC also speeds up the time it takes to change drill bits and enables change at the right time, improving customers’ safety, productivity and profitability. The award winners are Matthew Fosler, Luke Bender, Heath Young, Carla Chaname and Christopher Blignaut. 

The Dare to Think New Award gets its name from Epiroc’s vision. It is presented to Sisirnath Sangireddy, Global Innovation Enabler and the founder and driver of the Foster program, an employee-driven Epiroc program to share innovation ideas. With a strong drive and entrepreneurship, Sangireddy has further developed Epiroc’s strong culture of innovation and collaboration.