LaRonde’s Epiroc Diamec ARM deployment: safety and drilling lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Agnico Eagle’s LaRonde mine in Quebec has become the first underground operation globally to deploy Epiroc’s Diamec Automated Rod Magazine (ARM), a hands-free rod-handling system first unveiled at PDAC 2026 in Toronto. The ARM is being introduced and run by drilling contractor Machines Roger International (MRI) on Diamec core rigs, automating rod loading and retrieval in confined headings. For geotechnical and exploration drilling teams, the system points to reduced manual handling around rotating drill strings and more consistent cycle times on deep underground diamond drilling.
Technical Brief
- Consistent automated sequences simplify job safety analyses and standard operating procedures for underground diamond drilling.
- Reduced manual lifting of rod strings addresses cumulative musculoskeletal injury exposure in deep drilling campaigns.
- Automation of repetitive rod-handling steps supports more predictable compliance with site lock-out and guarding rules.
- Wider adoption would likely shift underground drilling risk assessments towards control-of-hazard-by-design rather than PPE.
Our Take
Agnico Eagle Mines has been scaling up capital commitments across Canada – from the C$14 billion Ontario pipeline to the Hope Bay build in Nunavut – and deploying automated drilling hardware at LaRonde in Quebec suggests it is standardising higher-tech underground practices across its domestic portfolio.
In our database, Agnico Eagle Mines appears frequently in gold-focused project stories, and the LaRonde automation move in Val-d'Or positions its mature Quebec asset as a test bed for technologies that could later be rolled into newer builds like Hope Bay.
Quebec assets such as LaRonde benefit from a relatively stable regulatory and skills environment compared with Agnico Eagle Mines’ northern projects, making it a lower-risk venue to trial Epiroc and MRI equipment integrations before wider deployment.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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