Nutrien and Ericsson, helping to feed the world

Driving fertilizer production with underground private 4G LTE

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The world's first underground private 4G LTE network for agribusiness

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Learn how Nutrien worked with Ericsson partner, Ambra Solutions, to drive higher production of potash—a key fertilizer ingredient needed to grow more food for the world’s expanding population—by enabling reliable data and voice communication across hundreds of kilometers of underground travel ways, improving worker safety and operational efficiency of its mines.

Case

#privatenetworks #IoT #digitaltransformation

Canadian company, Nutrien, is a principal supplier of fertilizer to the agriculture industry around the world. To improve the safety and efficiency of its potash operations, the company needed better voice and data communications across underground mines that can be 500 square kilometers in size. Working with Ambra Solutions and leveraging radio technology from Ericsson, Nutrien deployed a private 4G LTE network at its potash mine in Rocanville—the first of its kind for agribusiness—and is rolling out the wireless network to its other five mines across the province of Saskatchewan. With the LTE network, the company has improved the safety of mine workers with reliable data and voice communication while enabling higher productivity by reducing equipment downtime and streamlining data communication. The result is helping the company achieve its increased production goals while driving safer, more efficient mine operations.

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“Nutrien has charted a road to significantly increase our potash production to meet the world’s food needs, and this LTE and IoT technology will allow us to get there.”

— Justin Stade, Director of NPK Digital Transformation, Nutrien

Communicating efficiently between underground mining operations and the control room proved difficult due to the following challenges:

Wi-Fi not viable
With only a handful of Wi-Fi access points, workers could be required to travel several kilometers through the tunnels to get connected.
Manual processes
The most critical information on potential hazards, equipment conditions, and maintenance needs were shared using a paper logbook.
Difficult signal propagation
Physical consistency of potash and the shape of the tunnels made it difficult to propagate radio signals over distance.

“We knew Ericsson provided carrier-grade equipment in our public LTE sector and that the technology is built to operate reliably in very harsh conditions. Another great thing about Ericsson equipment is the ability to build redundancy into the infrastructure, so we have resiliency to maintain communication even if there is a component failure somewhere in the network.”

— Chad Skiba, IT Manager for Potash, Nutrien

Nutrien partnered with Ambra Solutions to design and deploy an innovative underground private 4G LTE network that is comprised of the following:

Ericsson hardware

Radio Access Network (RAN)

Ericsson software

LTE Radio Access Network
Massive IoT (LTE-M/NB IoT)
Upgradable to 5G NR

Ambra software

Ambra Intelligent Tracking System (IPS)
Ambra monitoring system

Ambra services

Engineering
24/7 support
Licensed Spectrum
SIM cards

Miners inspecting an underground ventilation system in a gold mine

Nutrien is driving higher potash production by improving safety and efficiency in its underground mines, providing reliable end-to-end wireless connectivity to track equipment and deliver real-time mining data to control room experts for faster, better-informed decision making.

Maximizes wireless coverage under ground

Delivers high-speed data and voice connectivity through hundreds of kilometers of underground travel ways, reducing the time to deliver critical mine information to the control room from hours to seconds.

Improves mine efficiency and productivity

With new mobile apps like push-to-talk, voice communication with supervisors and the control room is now instantaneous from anywhere in the mine, saving workers hours of travel time getting to the nearest phone.

Assures worker safety

Nutrien is using the LTE network to explore how to use wireless connectivity with location information to track the movement of vehicles, equipment, tools, and other assets throughout the mines.

Increases operational uptime

Combining data from IoT sensors on vehicles, equipment, and systems with analytics and machine learning, Nutrien will be able to get predictive maintenance intelligence to avoid production downtime and further improve safety, productivity, and environmental quality.

Future-proofs network investments

Ericsson technology supports redundancy to assure resilience so Nutrien can maintain communication even if there is a component failure. And it is easy to reconfigure systems should the company need to change the topology or expand the network in the future.

“Ericsson makes it very easy for us to reconfigure the system if we need to change the topology or expand the network. If 5G is needed in the future, Nutrien can just activate the license without replacing hardware. There’s really nothing that prevents us from making changes in the LTE network as Nutrien’s needs evolve.”

— Eric L'Heureux, President and CEO, Ambra Solutions