Judges have completed the unenviable task of evaluating a stellar list of entries in this year’s Mining Beacon Breakthrough Innovation Awardand – drum roll – the 2026 finalists can be announced.

This year’s finalists are SpaceDraft, CorePlan and MOVUS.

The Mining Beacon Breakthrough Innovation Award, sponsored by RFC Ambrian, recognises innovations that have progressed beyond concept stage and are demonstrating tangible impact, commercial relevance and the potential to shape the future of the mining and resources industry. The award celebrates organisations successfully advancing innovative products, technologies, services, processes, business models or significant enhancements to existing offerings that are driving meaningful industry change.

Judges assessed innovations developed, piloted, commercialised or significantly advanced in the past five years. Their scores reflected the maturity and market penetration of entries, the nature of the industry problem being solved and the growth potential of innovations that have been commercialised and achieved a measure of operational deployment and customer uptake.

Entrants were also asked to show a clear connection to Australian innovation, including technologies, research, intellectual property, companies, institutions or industry collaborations originating from or substantially developed in Australia.

Mining Beacon editorial director Richard Roberts said the calibre of the top dozen entries for the 2026 award was very high, making the job of separating finalists tough for the judges.

“IMARC brings most of the world’s leading resources technology, equipment and services companies, and many of best emerging firms, to Sydney each year,” he said.

“So the competitor pool for this award is very large and that is contributing to the consistent quality of entries.

“Finalists this year have clearly articulated the value they are generating for end-users, reflected in deployment rates, and the potential for wider market adoption and impact.”

 

The three finalists

Best of the rest

Not far behind the top three in the final vote tally this year were EcoHoist, Unleash Live, KCL Industries, Liberate Minerals, Micromine (a Weircompany), NLT Digital Solutions, Razor Labs, SimWell and Thomson Environmental Systems.

EcoHoist’s compact bucket elevator is a breakthrough vertical materials handling system for underground mining and high-temperature industry that could cut direct diesel truck haulage emissions by 75–80% and material transport costs by about 38%. EcoHoist potentially also reduces material lifting costs by about half versus conventional skip hoisting.

Unleash Live is an enterprise computer vision company that gives mining operators continuous, real-time visibility into vehicle safety, asset condition and site compliance, replacing manual inspections and after-the-fact incident reviews with information teams can act on in real time.

KCL Industries’ range of proprietary tertiary coal sizer segments are lighter, more durable and safer to install than conventional parts. The company says its innovation process was driven by direct consultation with maintenance crews and site safety officers to deliver safer, longer-lasting sizer segments that can improve plant availability and extend time between shutdowns.

Liberate Minerals says it is addressing a serious industry bottleneck with a scalable hydrometallurgical refining platform that can recover multiple high-value products from ores, concentrates, tailings and industrial waste streams. Its Resource Maximisation Process operates at ambient temperature and pressure, recycles more than 98% of its reagent back to the head of the process and produces minimal residual waste.

Micromine Advance is a purpose-built underground mine planning platform that brings together strategic analysis, underground mine design, scheduling and short-term planning within a single integrated environment, enabling engineers to move seamlessly from concept evaluation and mine design to execution-ready schedules.

NLT Digital Solutions says its next-generation Vigilance intrinsically safe communication technology for coal mining operations combines intelligent connectivity, advanced safety signalling and high-performance illumination into a rugged platform built for reliable field performance.

AI Sensor Fusion is the technology at the core of Razor Labs’ DataMind AI. Instead of reading a single sensor against a fixed OEM threshold, it fuses vibration, oil, temperature, pressure, current, tachometer and dispatch data with mechanical reasoning, filtering out normal operational noise such as sharp turns, overspeed or payload swings, to isolate genuine, developing failures weeks before they would otherwise surface.

SimWell says its simulation-driven Compass decision-intelligence platform has been built to answer questions mining and energy operators can’t settle with a spreadsheet, before money is committed to the wrong fix. The platform integrates optimisation and digital twin capabilities alongside simulation, bringing an operation’s modelling tools into one decision-intelligence solution rather than a patchwork of point tools.

Thomson Environmental Systems’ TES DMP PM Monitor introduces a click-in, click-out, tool-free modular maintenance system that promises to fundamentally change how particulate monitoring instruments are serviced.

RFC Ambrian executive director Cian Caffrey, Perenti head of mining electrification & technology Darren Kwok and BHP head of innovation ecosystems Katie Hulmes bring enormous experience to this year’s judging panel.

IMARC attendees are encouraged to visit the exhibition floor to meet this year’s finalists and other award nominees and see firsthand how their technologies are impacting mining safety, efficiency and costs.

The winner of the 2026 Mining Beacon Breakthrough Innovation Award will be announced on October 29 at the prestigious IMARC Gala Dinnerat Sydney’s Doltone House Jones Bay Wharf.