Next year’s conference will be held June 11 - 12, 2003 at the University of Aachen, Germany.

“Worldwide there is a recognizable trend to more productive underground operations. Decisive factors for further production increase are progress in propulsion and extraction technology, automation, predictive maintenance, logistics, planning and organization,” said conference organiser Professor Per Maartens of the university’s Institute of Mining Engineering.

Topics to be discussed will include:

- Operational experiences

- Profitability and productivity increase

- High performance operations planning

- Automation, logistics, operations control

- Mine safety and occupational health

- Machine technology and equipment

Organisers invite international industry and research experts to submit an abstract to the symposium secretariat for consideration.

This year’s Aachen conference in May, was attended by almost 500 international delegates from several mining countries. (see related article below).