After three intense days and more than 100 hours’ programming, Expande and BHP announced the winners of the first Hackathon the company organized in Chile and which was oriented to searching for solutions that would maximize and optimize milling performance using state-of-the-art modeling tools and data analysis.

Participating in the activity were: Enrique Molina, Executive Director of Expande; Cleve Lightfoot, Head of Innovation of BHP; Andrés Mitnik, Business Director of Expande; María José Araneda, Superintendent for Supply Innovation of Minerals Americas from BHP; Cristián Carrasco, Lead Field Trial from BHP and Ricardo Morgado, Director of Strategy and Development at Expande.

During this session, there was a total of five companies that put forward technological innovation solutions in the Pitch Day format, three of which were the winners; i.e. DataQu, ICV and Intellisense.io who were rewarded with US$ 4,000, U$ 2,000 and U$ 1,000, respectively plus the possibility of working directly with BHP.

Cleve Lightfoot pointed out that “in 2025, BHP’s idea is to become a totally integrated and highly automated company, from resources to marketplace, and we cannot do that alone, so we are promoting this HackAmine”.

Lightfoot added that “the importance for us is not only to improve a process, but how we energize the development of skills necessary for facing our future together. It is how we generate links of trust so as not to have to resolve things alone. This is how we pay back Chile in this digital race”

On the other hand, Andrés Mitnik indicated that “what is interesting with HackAmine is that it is a very valuable experience both for BHP as well as for those taking protect. During the first version, not only were 100 hours devoted to the development of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, but also we were able to assess collaborative working skills and cultural affinity as well as gain access to new visions so as to overcome the problems. So for as the companies taking part were concerned, this model of open innovation radically reduces the barriers to entry of a large company such as BHP and provides it with the opportunity to interact with its team of highly experienced professionals and executives”.

The executive also added that they are hoping to be able to repeat this experience with other companies so as come up with new opportunities for participation by tech suppliers.

Review the video summary of what was the first version of Hackamine.