Austin Powder Announces Record E*STAR Electronic Detonator Blast

Austin Powder, a leader in the manufacture, distribution, and application of industrial explosives and engineered blasting solutions, announced that on June 30, 2022, a record blast was fired using their E*STAR Electronic Blasting System Remote 2.5. The blast occurred at a large coal mine in Queensland, Australia, serviced by Austin Powder’s distributor Platinum Blasting Services. A total of 3,630 electronic detonators were consumed in the blast – a global record volume of electronic detonators fired in a single blast for Austin Powder.

Four E*STAR Remote 2.5 Blast Boxes were used to connect to and synchronously fire the 3,630 E*STAR electronic detonators inside 2,133 blast holes, loaded with a total of 437,385kg/962,247lbs of bulk explosives.

The Remote 2.5 system has the capability of synchronously firing up to 8 Remote Blast Boxes, each with 1,600 detonators connected, thus enabling a total of 12,800 detonators to be fired in a single blast.

Christine Grealy, Senior Technical Engineer, Platinum Blasting Services, said, “I greatly appreciate the efforts of the Platinum Blasting crew, especially Ben Faulkner as Shotfirer in Charge, Grant Merriman Shotfirer (2nd), and Walker Seccombe as Shift Site Supervisor. They all did a superb job ensuring such a large blast was successful.”

Campbell Robertson, Global Manager – Electronic Initiation Systems, said, “This record blast is a testament to the dedicated efforts of our research and development resources, field engineers, and technicians in bringing to our customer a system and solution that meets (and in some cases exceeds) our customer’s and end user’s needs. Congratulations to Christine Grealy and her team at Platinum Blasting Services that were instrumental in making this blast record a reality – the quality of the best practices applied can clearly be seen in the ‘textbook example’ blast video. We look forward to collaborating with our distributors and customers in firing larger and larger blasts to fully utilize the system’s capacity.”

A video of the blast can be viewed here.