Global impact, local values
Q&A with Pablo Wallach Beovic
wireless enabled electronic system with 2 way
communication capabilities
read interview
While its origins lie in South America, Enaex has big ambitions to humanize mining on a global scale. As it expands its reach, the company is determined to stay faithful to its roots of being a true partner to its clients by building stronger bonds. Vice-president of customer experience and digital transformation, Pablo Wallach, explains how Enaex is embracing this challenge by focusing on sustainable growth, vision and company culture.
What has motivated Enaex’s global growth?
Our purpose is to humanize mining. As part of this ambition, by 2026 we want to be remotely operating blasting processes. That will allow us to work under safer conditions by taking people out of dangerous zones and provide a better quality of life by enabling them to work closer to home in better conditions. We want to digitize the blasting service through real-time and historic information to increase efficiency, in parallel with artificial intelligence and mine-to-mill analysis to optimize the blasting result and increase the entire process efficiency for our customers.
As part of our Enaex Robotics solutions strategy, we are working on implementing wireless technology to our Electronic Initiation Systems, to enable full remote programming. Finally, we are working on multiple initiatives to reduce our environmental impact, including local green ammonia production to reduce the carbon footprint of our blasting agents.
We understand that to really have an impact, we need to lead and be relevant in the industry. That is why we took on the challenge to become global.
Cont
This started a few years ago when we decided to complete our product portfolio. A very important piece that was missing was electronic initiation systems. After evaluating our different options, we successfully acquired Davey Bickford, a leader in electronics initiation systems with a significant global footprint.
From there, we started growing our strategy to become a more global player. We acquired Britanite, the largest blasting service provider in Brazil, which was also a big platform for other countries in South America.
Despite the challenges that have been recently presented by Covid, we have been able to continue implementing that globalization strategy. Two recent milestones have been a joint venture last year with Sasol, a leading company in South Africa, and this year, the acquisition of Downer Blasting Services (DBS) in Australia, another important mining region, where we now have a complete blasting service offering.
How important is homogeneous communication?
As we continue to grow worldwide through M&As in the main mining regions, we have recognized the importance of ensuring we are not seen as a group of different companies and to become one unified global company. That was our internal slogan: we are one. Over the last few years, we have been working hard to become one company with a global footprint.
Internally, we have been very successful in becoming united in terms of the internal culture and values. We also identified a growing need to have a more homogeneous external communication, especially as we grow internationally. This year, we launched our new brand identity, which is consistent worldwide across the company’s website and social media.
We started by defining our identity: who we are, our role in the industry and market. We interviewed customers to really understand what differentiates us. As a general conclusion, we found that our ability as a company to be a true partner is what sets us apart.
What does it mean to be a true partner?
A true partner is a company that generates close relationships with its customers and will be there in good and bad times. Even if that means losing some money in the short term, we are convinced that it is the best business and the best way to serve our customer in the long term.
That’s how we came to our company signature of stronger bonds. It’s about being accessible, unbiased, empathetic and agile, to generate close relationships. Our vision is not necessarily to become the biggest blasting services provider, but the preferred one. That means that when a customer has a challenge, we want to be the first name they think of to call. We are convinced that this is what differentiates us in the market.
Relationships are crucial in the professional world. Understanding the customer’s challenges, needs, goals and long-term expectations allows us to develop solutions that specifically meet their requirements and to use our resources and R&D capabilities in a better way. This is how we will have a positive impact and stay true to our purpose of humanizing mining.
For example, we have a customer in Chile that had an issue with reactive rocks. The issue imposed numerous operational restrictions that affected the productivity of the mine. We developed a specific product to help them overcome this problem in around six months, including all explosive use authorizations to be manufactured at an industrial level.
In another case, one of our customers had a serious geological issue onsite that led to unstable circumstances. That’s why we started developing our robotic solutions to operate without exposing people to risk.
Another example of our ability to work together with our customers as a close partner was inferring bench rock hardness from drilling machine information and big data analysis, using artificial intelligence to build a model, resulting in a more efficient blast design and waste processing.
How do you define your approach to globalization?
Our approach is about growing while staying true to our identity and our values of being a true partner and generating stronger bonds. It is what we call ‘glocal’, meaning we are a global company, with more resources, technology and knowhow and a larger footprint, but without losing our local relationships.
We are convinced that the people working onsite with the customer are the ones who understand them best. They have the knowhow we require to develop tailor-made blasting solutions to bring added value to our customers worldwide. As we grow, we are working not to lose that. We want to avoid becoming a slow, layered, giant corporation, and instead to stay as agile and lean as possible and really empower local leaders to take decisions.
This is a very exciting time for Enaex. We are looking forward to returning to more face-to-face interactions, because that’s a big part of stronger bonds. We are moving forward with many interesting technology development projects around sustainability and the globalization strategy. We are going through a healthy globalization process and maintaining our customer-centric approach through it all.
GLOBAL IMPACT, LOCAL VALUES
Q&A WITH
PABLO WALLACH BEOVIC
wireless enabled electronic system with 2 way communication capabilities
read interview
While its origins lie in South America, Enaex has big ambitions to humanize mining on a global scale. As it expands its reach, the company is determined to stay faithful to its roots of being a true partner to its clients by building stronger bonds. Vice-president of customer experience and digital transformation, Pablo Wallach, explains how Enaex is embracing this challenge by focusing on sustainable growth, vision and company culture.
What has motivated Enaex’s global growth?
Our purpose is to humanize mining. As part of this ambition, by 2026 we want to be remotely operating blasting processes. That will allow us to work under safer conditions by taking people out of dangerous zones and provide a better quality of life by enabling them to work closer to home in better conditions. We want to digitize the blasting service through real-time and historic information to increase efficiency, in parallel with artificial intelligence and mine-to-mill analysis to optimize the blasting result and increase the entire process efficiency for our customers.
As part of our Enaex Robotics solutions strategy, we are working on implementing wireless technology to our Electronic Initiation Systems, to enable full remote programming. Finally, we are working on multiple initiatives to reduce our environmental impact, including local green ammonia production to reduce the carbon footprint of our blasting agents.
We understand that to really have an impact, we need to lead and be relevant in the industry. That is why we took on the challenge to become global.
This started a few years ago when we decided to complete our product portfolio. A very important piece that was missing was electronic initiation systems. After evaluating our different options, we successfully acquired Davey Bickford, a leader in electronics initiation systems with a significant global footprint.
From there, we started growing our strategy to become a more global player. We acquired Britanite, the largest blasting service provider in Brazil, which was also a big platform for other countries in South America.
Despite the challenges that have been recently presented by Covid, we have been able to continue implementing that globalization strategy. Two recent milestones have been a joint venture last year with Sasol, a leading company in South Africa, and this year, the acquisition of Downer Blasting Services (DBS) in Australia, another important mining region, where we now have a complete blasting service offering.
How important is homogeneous communication?
As we continue to grow worldwide through M&As in the main mining regions, we have recognized the importance of ensuring we are not seen as a group of different companies and to become one unified global company. That was our internal slogan: we are one. Over the last few years, we have been working hard to become one company with a global footprint.
Internally, we have been very successful in becoming united in terms of the internal culture and values. We also identified a growing need to have a more homogeneous external communication, especially as we grow internationally. This year, we launched our new brand identity, which is consistent worldwide across the company’s website and social media.
We started by defining our identity: who we are, our role in the industry and market. We interviewed customers to really understand what differentiates us. As a general conclusion, we found that our ability as a company to be a true partner is what sets us apart.
What does it mean to be a true partner?
A true partner is a company that generates close relationships with its customers and will be there in good and bad times. Even if that means losing some money in the short term, we are convinced that it is the best business and the best way to serve our customer in the long term.
That’s how we came to our company signature of stronger bonds. It’s about being accessible, unbiased, empathetic and agile, to generate close relationships. Our vision is not necessarily to become the biggest blasting services provider, but the preferred one. That means that when a customer has a challenge, we want to be the first name they think of to call. We are convinced that this is what differentiates us in the market.
Relationships are crucial in the professional world. Understanding the customer’s challenges, needs, goals and long-term expectations allows us to develop solutions that specifically meet their requirements and to use our resources and R&D capabilities in a better way. This is how we will have a positive impact and stay true to our purpose of humanizing mining.
For example, we have a customer in Chile that had an issue with reactive rocks. The issue imposed numerous operational restrictions that affected the productivity of the mine. We developed a specific product to help them overcome this problem in around six months, including all explosive use authorizations to be manufactured at an industrial level.
In another case, one of our customers had a serious geological issue onsite that led to unstable circumstances. That’s why we started developing our robotic solutions to operate without exposing people to risk.
Another example of our ability to work together with our customers as a close partner was inferring bench rock hardness from drilling machine information and big data analysis, using artificial intelligence to build a model, resulting in a more efficient blast design and waste processing.
How do you define your approach to globalization?
Our approach is about growing while staying true to our identity and our values of being a true partner and generating stronger bonds. It is what we call ‘glocal’, meaning we are a global company, with more resources, technology and knowhow and a larger footprint, but without losing our local relationships.
We are convinced that the people working onsite with the customer are the ones who understand them best. They have the knowhow we require to develop tailor-made blasting solutions to bring added value to our customers worldwide. As we grow, we are working not to lose that. We want to avoid becoming a slow, layered, giant corporation, and instead to stay as agile and lean as possible and really empower local leaders to take decisions.
This is a very exciting time for Enaex. We are looking forward to returning to more face-to-face interactions, because that’s a big part of stronger bonds. We are moving forward with many interesting technology development projects around sustainability and the globalization strategy. We are going through a healthy globalization process and maintaining our customer-centric approach through it all.
