The two opened the state-of-the-art Rio Tinto Innovation Centre in Pune, India yesterday.

Rio Tinto head of innovation John McGagh told MiningNews.net that over the next six to nine months the company hoped to move up to 50 Mine of the Future programs to the centre to scale them up.

“We’ve been at this [Mine of the Future] for about five years,” he said.

“We’ve filled the pipeline with a whole suite of projects. I have to take those parts and do the late-stage development.”

To do that, McGagh said, would require “loads and loads” of highly skilled engineers, which is something iGATE Patni has in abundance.

The company has a history of bringing its engineering horsepower to major corporations. These include the likes of GE.

“RTIC will allow us to take a specific technology developed at one of our centres of excellence, such as the mine automation system currently in use at our Pilbara iron ore operations in Western Australia, and adapt it for broader application across our network of mines,” McGagh said.

The RTIC will have about 300 employees, mainly skilled engineers, who will address the diverse, challenging technological demands from across Rio Tinto operations.

It will focus on disciplines such as image processing, advanced data mining and analytics, automation and control systems, design and logistics.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication MiningNews.net.