This year's finalists are Anglo American, Bis Industries, the NPJV, Boart Longyear and Interlate.

The award looks at collaborative innovation involving a mine owner, project developer or contractors and suppliers that directly results in an outstanding commercial outcome or outcomes.

Anglo American applied a surface miner from Sydney-based Specialist Tunnel Excavations to help it solve a problem in its drill and blast area.

Due to the steeply dipping coal seams at its Dawson mine drill preparation used to involve creating "level" benches by backfilling with overburden from other mining areas. This was a time consuming task that resulted in low quality drilling.

The surface miner was able to create almost flat areas that allowed better drilling and blasting.

Bis CEO Brad Rogers recognised a problem in doubling handling product when it was being moved from pit to processing.

He tasked the Bis engineering team to come up with a long range out of pit hauler that would combine the distance capacity of a traditional off road haulage truck with the strength of a conventional dump truck.

Last year the 160t, 20-wheeled Rexx was launched.

The Njamal People, the Traditional Owners of the land east of South Hedland past Marble Bar and out to Wandanya on the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia decided to create a contracting business to do more for their people.

They had to overcome the poor corporate governance, minimal business planning and financial literacy, and lack of ongoing operational support that had caused many other Indigenous businesses to fail.

The Njamal joined forces with Pilbara Resource Group to create a successful contracting firm.

The NPJV has so far picked up more than $20 million in contracts.

Boart Longyear has made the cut for its Truscan device that can provide non-destructive, high-density elemental concentration data faster than the drill rig can produce drill core.

To create the device Boart Longyear put together a team, some of whom were completely removed from the mining industry.

That team developed bespoke algorithms and hardware to deliver the result.

Technology start-up Interlate has developed a solution that includes a blend of technology, expertise and big data analytics to provide sustainable productivity improvements in mineral processing plants.

It connects operations in real time to the best minds and solutions through a live secure data connection.

That can provide real-time insight to the site teams.

• The Innovation Award will be awarded at the Future of Mining Awards 2019 at the Sofitel Sydney, which are part of the Future of Mining Australia conference from March 25 to 26. Tickets are available.