Blasting is, in many ways, the most consequential operation on a mine site. Get it right and you’ve set up the whole downstream process – fragmentation is on spec, the crusher isn’t working overtime, throughput holds. Get it wrong and you’re dealing with something far worse: oversize material choking the mill, a flyrock incident, community noise complaints from ground vibration, or a stope blast that didn’t break cleanly underground.
For decades, a lot of that decision-making lived in people’s heads, in paper records, or in spreadsheets that only one person really understood. The knowledge stayed with the experienced blasters. When they moved on, it moved with them.
MineExcellence, a Melbourne-based technology company, has spent the better part of a decade working on that exact problem.
Built on Genuine Research
What separates MineExcellence from a generic mining software company is where it came from. Co-founder Dr. Sushil Bhandari holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales and has published over 100 papers in international journals on blasting technology. His textbook, Engineering Rock Blasting Operations, is used in undergraduate and postgraduate mining courses. He has received India’s National Mineral Award for contributions to mining technology and served on the Advisory Board of the Indian Bureau of Mines.
That depth of background matters. It means the platform isn’t just a data collection tool – the underlying models for predicting fragmentation, flyrock distances, air blast, and ground vibration are grounded in decades of field research and peer-reviewed science.
The commercial side is handled by co-founder and Managing Director Amit Bhandari, who spent years in executive roles at Accenture, PwC Consulting, and IBM before turning to technology entrepreneurship. Together, they’ve built a team of more than 40 people spanning mining engineers, software developers, and UX specialists across Melbourne and India.
What the Platform Actually Does
The MineExcellence platform covers the full blasting lifecycle – design, execution, data collection, and post-blast analysis – through a suite of connected tools.
For open pit operations, their BLADES software handles blast design, while BIMS (Blast Information Management System) manages the data from each blast: patterns, timings, results, and environmental impacts. The Smart Blasting App puts this capability directly on a mobile device, so blasters in the field have real-time access to design parameters and predictive tools without needing to walk back to an office.
The blasting predictor tools are where the science becomes practically useful. Before a blast goes ahead, site teams can run predictions on fragmentation size, estimate flyrock risk zones, model air blast pressure, and check ground vibration against the site’s allowable limits. For mines operating near communities or with strict environmental conditions, that kind of pre-blast modelling has shifted from “nice to have” to a regulatory and social licence requirement.
Underground operations are covered separately through BIMSu, which handles stope blasting and tunnel development, and BLASTOP for development rounds.
More recently, MineExcellence has added drone data analytics into the workflow, integrating aerial survey data with blast design and post-blast fragmentation analysis. It also supports GIS integration and connects with ERP and mine planning systems, which matters for larger operations trying to keep blast data inside their existing information architecture.
Accessible Beyond Tier-1
One of the stated goals from the outset has been making high-quality blasting intelligence accessible to smaller operations, not just the majors with dedicated technical teams. The platform runs as SaaS – no servers to manage, no IT infrastructure required – which means a smaller mining contractor or a single-site operation can run the same analytical tools as a tier-1 company.
That ambition has translated into a genuinely international client base. MineExcellence’s software is used across mines in Australia, India, South Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia, by operations ranging from single sites to multi-mine groups.
In Australia, where community expectations around blast vibration and dust are tightening and regulators are asking more detailed questions about blast management, having a documented, data-backed blasting process is increasingly important. The shift from ad-hoc records to a proper information management system is one that most operations will need to make eventually. MineExcellence is one of the few companies that have built a purpose-made platform for it.
