The Kalgoorlie branch of Johnex Explosives is the first site in Australia to use a new system designed to track explosives from manufacture to detonation.

A trial of the tracking system, which Johnex general manager David Blythe-Wood described as "quite revolutionary", began on Monday with all boxes leaving the Kalgoorlie manufacturing depot tagged with a radio frequency identification device.

The tagging system was designed by Perth-based Global Tracking Solutions director John Moore, who believes Australia will soon fall into line with international standards governing explosives.

"This is about making the world safer and the ability to track explosives," he said.

Mr Moore said the Brazilian government had decreed all explosives had to be labelled at unit level and the information recorded for 10 years, while the European Union was drafting similar regulations.

GTS has developed a number of programs to read the RFID tags, including DETrack, PREtrack, MAGsafe and IEtracker.

"PREtrack is the starting block," Mr Moore said. "It supports manufacturing by allowing a company to track its products.

"With MAGsafe, we can now take the information from the trucking company and do electronic proof of delivery."

The IEtracker program is designed for drill and blast engineers and links information from every hole to the individual explosive used.

"It (the tag) can track an explosive from manufacture to delivery to storage and use," Mr Moore said. "It offers security and trackability."

Mr Blythe-Wood said the technology was the way of the future.
"It's the way the explosives industry is moving," he said.

"We (Johnex) now have a lot more accountability for the people handling explosives and it's giving us an electronic stock control system."

He said the cost was competitive and would offer savings down the line.

"We'll be able to see in five years time who delivered it (a particular explosive) and who did the quality control," he said.

"It's an amazing amount of information that can be stored on a tag."

Mr Moore said he had presented the protocols he had created to the Australian working committee of the International Standards Organisation, which was meeting next week.

If recommended, the protocols could become standard and he hoped GTS would be the market leader in the programs designed to interpret the information.

Kal Miner