Mining is changing, and at the heart of this transformation is the remarkable father-son team of Sushil and Amit Bhandari. With roots in traditional mining and a vision for the future, they’ve combined decades of hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology to create something extraordinary. The Bhandari family’s Melbourne-based business, MineExcellence, is bringing mining into the digital era. They are making a mark by transforming drilling and blasting operations with smarter, tech-driven strategies.

Origins in the Australian Outback

In a small office in Broken Hill, New South Wales, circa 1975, a young Indian mining engineer named Sushil Bhandari would wait two days for his computer punch cards to return from Sydney with crucial calculations for his doctoral research. Nearly fifty years later, his company’s software can process complex blast designs in seconds, helping mining operations across ten countries optimise their drilling and explosives use. This transformation – from punch cards to cloud computing – mirrors not just technological advancement, but a fundamental shift in how the mining industry approaches one of its most critical operations: breaking rock.

When Sushil Bhandari arrived in Broken Hill in the 1970s, he was one of only five Indians in a town of 30,000. The isolated mining community, the birthplace of BHP (now BHP Billiton), would prove to be the perfect laboratory for his doctoral research in blast mechanics. Without photocopying facilities or internet access, Bhandari meticulously documented his research by hand, regularly requesting books and papers from anywhere they were available in Australia.