Ask a site manager what keeps them up at night, and the answer rarely stays on one topic for long. It moves from tonnes per hour and weighbridge queues to blind spots on a haul truck, then to whether the cabin air filtration on an old excavator is actually doing its job.
These sound like separate problems, handled by separate suppliers, solved with separate budgets. In practice, they’re all instances of the same underlying issue — operators making decisions without complete, real-time information about what is happening around and inside their machine.
Based in Perth and operating nationally since 2017, SmartTech Australia has built its business on that observation, becoming one of the more unusual technology integrators serving Australian mining and civil sites.
From four people to the world’s largest loadrite dealer
SmartTech Australia started as a spinout from SITECH WA with a four-person team.
Within its first year, it had acquired Loadrite dealerships across Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania — a rate of expansion that, combined with its relationship to parent company Seven Group Holdings, has made it the largest Loadrite dealership in the world.
Loadrite’s on-board weighing systems are the company’s foundation. They replace the weighbridge stop with real-time payload data displayed directly in the cab, across excavators, wheel loaders, haul trucks, conveyors, and forklifts.
For operators managing chain of responsibility obligations, the distinction matters commercially as much as operationally.
Loadrite’s Legal for Trade systems are approved by the National Measurement Institute (NMI), and SmartTech is the only certified technician network in Australia authorised to upgrade existing Loadrite scales to Legal for Trade status, turning a loader or waste truck into what is effectively a certified mobile weighbridge.
That certification detail is not a minor technical footnote. Under Australian axle load regulations, inaccurate weighing exposes operators to overload fines and compliance risk regardless of intent.
A weighing system that is NMI-approved and properly calibrated closes that exposure rather than just reducing it.
Blind spot safety is now an engineering control problem
SmartTech’s second major line of business addresses a different but related risk. As the authorised Australian distributor of Correct-AI’s PROX-EYE® proximity detection systems, the company supplies AI-powered cameras that identify people and vehicles around heavy equipment.
The system alerts operators before a collision occurs, without requiring pedestrians to wear tags or beacons.
The scale of the underlying problem is worth stating plainly. Vehicle incidents account for 42% of all work-related fatalities in Australia, and machinery operators and drivers are the highest-fatality occupation group in the country.
Under the Work Health and Safety (WHS) Act 2011, a person conducting a business or undertaking must eliminate or minimise foreseeable risks, so far as is reasonably practicable. And engineering controls sit above spotters, signage, and administrative procedures in the hierarchy of controls.
A camera system that continuously monitors detection zones and does not depend on operator attention or pedestrian compliance is precisely the kind of control regulators expect to see documented in a safe work method statement (SWMS).
The PROX-EYE® range spans an entry-level ECO system for light vehicle fleets through to the ULTRA platform for heavy mining equipment, which runs onboard AI processing, three configurable detection zones, and vehicle detection ranges out to 30 metres.
With more than 6 million exposure hours and over 2,300 cameras active in the field, the deployment history is now substantial enough to be a meaningful reference point for safety teams evaluating the technology.
Air, lubrication, and connectivity: The less visible side
The parts of SmartTech’s business that attract less attention are arguably just as consequential for site operators. The company supplies pressurised cabin air filtration systems designed to protect heavy equipment operators from silica dust and diesel particulate exposure, an occupational health issue that has become a growing regulatory focus in Australian mining.
It also supplies Lincoln automated lubrication systems — including dual line, Quicklub, and Centromatic configurations — which reduce the manual maintenance burden on fixed and mobile plant while cutting the mechanical wear that comes from inconsistent lubrication intervals.
Its Rajant wireless mesh networking business addresses a different but equally practical problem: maintaining reliable connectivity across remote and underground operations where fixed infrastructure is impractical.
For sites running autonomous or semi-autonomous equipment, telemetry, or real-time safety systems, connectivity is what makes everything else in the technology stack actually usable.
A single point of accountability
What distinguishes SmartTech Australia from a company selling any one of these products individually is the breadth of coverage under one technical relationship. Payload accuracy, collision prevention, air quality, lubrication reliability, and network connectivity are usually procured from five different vendors on an Australian mine site.
SmartTech’s model — backed by NMI-certified technicians and service locations in Brisbane, Townsville, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth — consolidates that into a single national support relationship covering supply, installation, calibration, and ongoing servicing.
For operations weighing up how many separate technology vendors they actually need on site, that consolidation is worth understanding in more detail.
Image Credit: smarttechaustralia.com.au
