Speak to some of the winners of recent hackathon events and the results are mixed.

The inaugural winner of the Unearthed Hackathons, Newton Labs, is still to commercialise its invention, however, that appears to be close.

Another quirk of these hackathons is that teams from established organisations have been winning them. 

A team from established mineral processing systems maker Gekko Systems called Digi-MIN won the most recent Unearthed Hackathon for the tool it developed that flagged impending failures in Newcrest’s concentrators at the Cadia mine in New South Wales.

Digi-MIN’s tool  flagged small variations in the correlation between two related variables and could show the correlation between two variables in the plant’s high pressure grinding rolls changed a number of times before a single downtime event.

The algorithm developed was good enough to start flagging changes more than 24 hours beforehand and could be easily applied to any two related variables across any piece of equipment.

Another winner of one of the hackathons, Petra Data Science, has found that its win led to a number of opportunities in the mining space. Petra had been around in its own right before the hackathon.

The good news for METS start-ups though is that there has been a change in the market.

While the mining industry has been in a holding pattern for two or three years, it has started to look for solutions to its problems again.

Money also seems to be flowing back into the sector.

Newton Labs was a creation of the first hackathon.

While the company won the Emerging Innovation Category in the Western Australian Innovator of the Year in 2015, it has not been the easiest of roads.

If anything, Newton Labs co-founder Simon Vincent has seen just how hard the road to commercialisation can be, and while the Newton Labs offering is not commercialised yet, he believes it is on the commercialisation cusp.

Not bad for a company that started life with a proof of concept device made of a Tonka truck, a fitball, an iPhone and gaffer tape.

“We came together as a team on the day,” Vincent said.

“In 54 hours you get to know each other quite well.

“Afterwards we all caught up and thought about what each person wanted to do.”

Two of the team mates went on to other things while Vincent and Michael Del Borrello kept on with the business.

The Newton Labs devices was designed to detect when an oversized rock was loaded into a truck. This way the truck could be diverted to wherever a rock breaker was lest that large rock cause problems when the truck reached the crusher.

Testing began in quarries round Perth, Western Australia.

However, the mining downturn started to bite and things started to get a bit tough for the company.

Vincent said that downturn cost Newton Labs a lot of the momentum it had built up in the wake of the hackathon win.

It also encountered a legacy of the previous mining booms, starting off pitching its offering to the innovation teams in the mining companies and became bogged down in their bureaucracies. 

Times have changed though.

“Right now we’re dealing directly with sites, dealing with stakeholders who just want to solve a problem they have,” Vincent said.

“In my opinion this is the way to develop innovation.”

The hold ups caused by the mining downturn and the bureaucracy Newton Labs encountered actually worked in its favour.

The company went from having the oversize rock detector to further developing its platform.

These days it has about five to six offerings that can give miners a far better idea of what their trucks are carrying and, in some cases, carrying back with them.

Vincent said the company had survived by getting paid for the trials it had run for various miners.

Petra Data Science won one of the Brisbane hackathons that led to an involvement with Newcrest Mining.

That involvement went beyond just the solution Petra had provided at the hackathon and led to wider opportunities.

Petra Data Sciences managing director and principal Dr Penny Stewart said at the time of the 2015 hackathon the business had been going about nine months.

“We’re probably one of the first companies to recognise the value of data science in mining,” she said.

“These days there is a lot more awareness. When we started out we were trying to educate about the opportunity of data science. Now it’s more about trying to differentiate our offering.”

Stewart explained the IBMs, the GEs and the Microsofts were moving into the space with their own more general solutions.

The Petra solutions are much more targeted, she said.

“I did a big data study as part of the [Sustainable Mineral Institute’s] Mass Mining Technology Project,” Stewart said.

“We were analysing blast damage in block cave mines. We basically developed a new way to quantify impact rock damage using X-Ray tomography data. We commercialised that project. It’s called Labyrinth.”

Stewart said Petra was also applying its big data capability to mine and mill optimisation projects for one client in iron ore and another running a gold mine.

“We take all the geological information and use it to predict what will happen in the plant,” she said.

The company also integrates a host of other data such as fragmentation data from blasting, truck and shovel data and other operational information.

Both Petra’s clients are trying to work out how to optimise their operations and this data interrogation is heading them down the path to do that.

Stewart said Petra had grown into a stronger business.

“I was the only paid person when we started,” she said.

“Now we have six employees – although not all of those people are full-time.”

Stewart said she expected the company to double its first half revenue in the second half of the year.

“I think the broad understanding of data science has helped, plus marketing ourselves as mining professionals with expertise in data science.

“We can understand what their problems are and help them with their scope definitions.

“I think it helps having people understanding mining being involved.”

Not every project, even a winning one, necessarily leads to a product.

A project by four machine learning experts from NICTA, the forerunner to Data61.

The NICTA team went by the team name Statbadgers and won the Unearthed Sydney 2015 Hackathon for a machine learning development that could predict platinum recovery rates for AngloAmerican 24 hours in advance of lab results.

This development had the potential to drive significant savings for Anglo American.

Statbadgers member Dr Lachlan McCalman said the development did not lead to a spin-off product, at least not in minerals.

“Some aspects of that technology have been adapted and are in use in different applications,” he said.

For those that do have a product though, there is some hope of getting work.

Rio Tinto Copper growth & innovation vice-president Craig Stegman told Australia’s Mining Monthly that the mining giant was looking to work with METS companies to help it solve its problems.

“You just have to get out there and have that look and see what’s going on and if there is an opportunity,” he said.

“The mining industry is cyclical. Even the most robust companies will respond to the cycle.

“During that downturn we kept talking to companies.

“What we’re looking for is the quickest, cheapest ways to get an innovation up.”

Stegman said Rio Tinto would even pay for the construction of some of the devices proposed.

On the funding front a private equity fund has emerged that is looking to buy METS businesses.

Called Viburnum the fund is backed by the Perth-based Wyllie Group and has four US institutional investors including the University of Texas.

This fund has only $150 million, which Viburnum managing director Marshall Allen said would give it enough for two or three deals.

“Our space is entrepreneurs valued between $10 million and $100 million,” Allen said.

“Not massive but mid to early stage start-ups.”

Viburnum only has one investment in the METS space at this stage, Minnovare, which has the Azimuth Aligner technology to improve drilling productivity, accuracy and safety.

Viburnum Funds managing director Marshall Allen said this fund’s investments would be split between oil and gas services and METS, although, he is keen to get METS investments going first.

“We are overexposed to oil and gas so we’re looking at mining,” he said.

Viburnum is not looking for earthmoving or drilling contractor businesses, which Allen believes have become commoditised in Australia and require a lot of gearing to operate.

“Our preference is someone with a bit of a niche, a bit of intellectual property and clients prepared to pay a little extra for the service,” he said.

This fund has been set up as a proof of concept for the region.

Allen said the funds US partners had appetite for further investments beyond the $150 million in the fund.

“If we had to deploy double that it would not really be a problem,” he said.

After hooking up with institutional investors in the US the first resources services fund was put together. That closed two years ago and one of its main investments is an oil and gas-focused business called the Kinetic Group. Within that business are a host of other businesses the fund picked up including mining wireline company Surtron Technologies. The bulk of its offerings are oil and gas related.

“Now we’re looking to put half the fund into oil and gas services around Asia and the rest into mining services.

“In the listed space the mining multipliers have just run ahead. There are expectations of big turnarounds in the near future.”

Allen said there were some very strong mining services businesses around because they had been through the tough times, cut costs and were now enjoying extremely high margins.

When Viburnum gets involved with businesses it does not, like other some other funds, get too involved in their management.

Where it does get involved is in strategic matters and Viburnum also has a right of veto on decisions that may deviate from that agree strategy.