推 Chungli28:開放working holiday效果可能最好 XD 10/05 23:57
推 cgy:推樓上XD 10/06 09:56
推 Akulamaru:現役司機也可以去working holiday嗎？XD 10/06 12:07
推 mecca:這樣台鐵司機會不會跑光光 10/06 15:11
原文
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-02/rio-replacing-train-drivers-paid-like-u-s-surgeons.html
縮址
http://ppt.cc/7ijz
看到標題實在很驚人，對吧。
新聞很長，不過是英文的，看起來也不算難....吧？所以大概講
講就好，細節麻煩自己看囉。
總之簡單講就是力拓集團 (RIO)，和另兩家礦產公司掌握了世界
上 59%的鐵礦。而力拓在澳洲運鐵礦的約 400名列車駕駛，每年
收入達24萬澳幣 (折合台幣約 650萬) ，行情約當美國的外科醫
生收入。
於是力拓集團開始考慮用全自動駕駛取代這些列車駕駛，不過看
起來短期內還不是很有可能完全奏效。
其他內容還談到關於鐵礦行情展望跟成本分析控管等等。
歡迎補充指正。
========================================================
Rio Replacing Train Drivers Paid Like U.S. Surgeons
By Elisabeth Behrmann
Oct 3, 2013 1:53 PM GMT+0800
Train drivers employed by Rio Tinto Group to haul iron
ore across Australia’s outback make about the same money
as surgeons in the U.S. It’s little wonder the mining
company will replace them with robot locomotives.
The 400-plus workers in the remote Pilbara region who
earn about A$240,000 ($224,000) a year probably are the
highest-paid train drivers in the world, according to
U.K.-based transport historian Christian Wolmar.
Australia’s decade-long mining boom has sucked up
skilled workers, raising wages for engineers to drivers
at Rio, the second-largest exporter of the mineral, and
its closest competitors, Vale SA (VALE) and BHP Billiton
Ltd.
The three companies that control about 59 percent of the
$145 billion-a-year global iron ore trade are automating
to bolster margins and squeeze out extra capacity as they
boost supply to a record to feed steel mills in China,
the biggest buyer. The push by Rio (RIO), which aims to
move about 290 million metric tons on its rail network by
next year, is expected to be the biggest driver for cost
cuts in its iron ore unit after currency swings,
according to Deutsche Bank AG.
“All producers are chasing better margins and stronger
returns,” said Chris Drew, an analyst in Sydney with
Royal Bank of Canada. “Rio is ahead of the competition
in terms of automation of trucks and trains,” Drew said
in an interview after touring its ore operations in the
mostly arid Pilbara, home to Western Australia’s biggest
deposits for export.
Seaborne Glut
The pace of automation is picking up as the seaborne
market is poised for at least four years of gluts. The
price of ore, which rose as much as eightfold in the past
decade as China added $6.8 trillion to its gross domestic
product, will drop to $80 a ton in 2015, according to a
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast. It closed yesterday at
$131.40 a ton.
Rio, which last year approved spending of $7.2 billion to
expand the iron ore operations, is aiming to have the
world’s first, fully automated, long-distance and
heavy-haul rail system operating in 2015. Its automated
rail will have 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) of track,
10,000 wagons and individual train sets 2.3 kilometers
long, according to Credit Suisse Group AG. The company is
spending $518 million on the program that was announced
last year.
“You need to have quite a significant amount of scale”
in fleet and volumes to benefit from automation
technology, said Evy Hambro, manager of BlackRock Inc.
(BLK)’s $7.7 billion World Mining Fund.
Regulators in Canada and the U.S. are reviewing rules for
transporting hazardous materials after a runaway train
carrying crude oil derailed and exploded on July 6 in
Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people and incinerating
30 buildings. The train was operated by a single engineer,
who parked the train for the night and left it unattended.
Laser Detectors
Rio’s rail, port and truck movements are all watched
over from a control center in the Western Australia state
capital of Perth, 1,500 kilometers to the southeast, that
has about 250 controllers working three shifts a day. The
rail automation is part of the company’s push to use
technology to improve productivity and safety and wring
out extra capacity from existing assets, Simon Prebble,
general manager for Rio’s automated trains project, said
in an interview yesterday.
The trains have on-board systems that check speed,
signals and operate the brake, Prebble said. Rio has
installed a new radio-based network to communicate with
the trains as well as close-circuit television at every
public level crossing, he said. “We also have an
obstruction detection system which uses laser scanners to
continually look for any obstructions.”
Earnings Driver
The competitiveness of some iron ore mines in the Pilbara
as well as some future projects is set to improve with
the adoption of the new technologies on trucks and trains,
Australia’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics said
yesterday in a report.
Iron ore will remain the dominant earnings driver for BHP
(BHP) and Rio as rising production offsets falling prices
, Citigroup Inc. said in a Sept. 13 report. The mineral
accounted for 78 percent of Rio’s earnings before
interest, depreciation and amortization last year, and 92
percent for Vale, according to data compiled by Bloomberg
. BHP had 43 percent Ebitda from iron ore in fiscal 2013,
the data show.
“It’s going to provide a healthy return on investment
for Rio,” Adrian Wood, a Sydney-based analyst with
Macquarie Group Ltd., said by phone. “They’re trying to
squeeze out those extra few tons a year by automating it.”
Rio’s Ebitda margin per ton of ore is forecast to drop
43 percent to $43.99 in 2015 from $70.01 in 2013, with
BHP’s set to fall 42 percent to $40.68 and Vale by 61
percent to $23.11, according to Goldman Sachs.
Shave Costs
Rio also plans to automate about 40 percent of its
Pilbara truck fleet by 2016. The goal is to reduce costs
to $15.60 a ton by 2020, from $23.10 a ton in the first
half of this year, Paul Young, a Sydney-based analyst
with Deutsche Bank said in a report after touring
operations last month, citing Rio data. Automation is set
to help shave $1.90 a ton off costs and boost output by
20 million tons, or 5 percent, he said.
Each train driver earns about A$240,000 a year, according
to Credit Suisse. Surgeons based in the U.S. earned a
mean annual wage of $230,540 last year, according to data
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New York state
lawyers on average earned $151,000, according to the data
. Rio spokesman Bruce Tobin declined to comment on train
drivers’ salaries and the potential cost savings from
the company’s automation drive.
“The position we’ve taken is that you’re never going
to win the argument against technology,” said Gary Wood
, Western Australia district secretary for the
Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, which
covers the drivers. “We’re going to work to be involved
the protection of as many jobs as possible as a result of
any changes in technology.”
Ironing Out Bugs
Rio may be able to cut its wage bill for train drivers by
about A$100 million annually should it reduce train
driver numbers by 400, CIMB Australia Ltd. analyst Michael
Evans said last month in a report following the tour.
Total net operating costs for all units in 2012 were $37.5
billion.
The automation is a long-term project that won’t produce
quick results, said Tim Schroeders, portfolio manager at
Pengana Capital Ltd. in Melbourne.
“The type of work does lend itself to automation but
ironing out the bugs and integrating the driver-operated
machinery, understanding scheduling, will take some time,
” Schroeders said in a phone interview. “Realistically,
it’s not going to change the mining business
significantly in the next three to five years.”
The miners, which began driving down costs last year
after the 10-year China-led commodity price boom began to
peak, are also seeking to cut the number of truck drivers
, with Rio’s biggest iron ore mine now almost entirely
operated by driverless trucks, according to CIMB.
Conveyor Belts
Vale is building the $20 billion Serra Sul project and
will be the first to fully replace in-mine trucks with
conveyor belts 23 miles long and building a second
railway through the Amazon to cut costs, according to
the Rio de Janeiro-based company. BHP, the world’s
biggest miner, started a trial of 12 driverless trucks at
its Jimblebar iron ore mine this year and opened its own
remote operation center in Perth in July.
“Once Rio has cracked it, I wouldn’t expect BHP to be
that far behind,” Paul Phillips, a Melbourne-based fund
manager with Perennial Growth Management Pty that holds
BHP shares. “Vale has slightly different issues in that
they have a multi-user railway, to try and automate that
for a single-user iron ore operation, it gets much harder
because you have the interaction with the other players.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Elisabeth Behrmann
in Sydney at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jason
Rogers at [email protected]
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