Austin Powder Panama Crew Onsite Over 90 Days to Keep Customer Operating During Pandemic!

For over 90 days, 8 Austin Powder family members in Panama had been performing the job function of a 15 person crew. These eight men remained at the mine as essential employees, ensuring that operations continued while the country remained in lock-down.

On June 10th they finally were able to head home and a new crew of 15 headed into the mine to relieve them of duties on June 6th.

Our Crew of 8

“Let’s all give these 8 Austin family members and their real family members at home a big THANK YOU in sacrificing and supporting our customer at this level. These 8 men just defined what it means to step up and go above and beyond normal expectations. Let’s also thank the entire Panama team for supporting them and their families while they were in the mine. This was a difficult time but they have made all of us at Austin Powder look better through the eyes of this customer who had never even heard of Austin before coming to Panama," shares John Rathbun. "Thank you Team Panama!”

(The Scoop - we have word that a short documentary video is being made. Look for future updates.)

ONE AUSTIN

Bulk Plant Project for Intrachem in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa

"Building an explosives plant in Zimbabwe was bound to be a challenge," explains Warren Cohen, MD of Intrachem. "We are a developing country where the thought of manufacturing explosives is high tech and very unknown to us. The Austin Technology GmbH (ATG) team has done a great job supporting us remotely and we were very fortunate to have had Ralf at our site earlier in the year. The group is hands on, clear and gave fantastic guidance to our teams. What stood out more than anything was the approach to safety and the processes around safety, even in the early stages of our plant build."

In this Bulk Plant project for Intrachem, ATG provided all control panels, instrumentation and engineering.

"I have the confidence that we will be manufacturing a world class product under the safest conditions in our industry," says Warren.

Get a bird's eye view of Intrachem's Emulsion plant:

We value our partner, Intrachem. ONE AUSTIN.

SPECIAL FEATURE

Dave True - A Tribute To 45 Years of Service

This June marked 45 years of service for Dave True, past president of the Austin Powder Company. John Rathbun personally delivered the custom pin box to Dave earlier this month. In the center of the box is a brass Powderman medallion.

John shares, "It is an honor to present Dave with his 45-year service pin award. Austin Powder has been blessed by many hardworking, committed employees over the years, but very few to the level of Dave True. He has tirelessly built relationships with customers, employees, regulators, etc. during his career and epitomizes the essence of living the values of the Austin culture. Dave was also presented a special shadow box for displaying his service awards that he has collected during his career. I had asked him to bring them to the lunch and he discovered that he had misplaced his 35 year award. Then his wife, Karyn, reminded him that he wore it to Herman A. DeProspero’s funeral and when he saw that Herman didn’t have an Austin pin on his lapel, Dave removed his and gave it to him. That act sums up Dave’s contribution to Austin’s family culture and his appreciation of others."

Lessons Learned Along The Way

Over his career, Dave has held a lot of different jobs within APC, and has learned from an army of Austin mentors along the way. In a special interview, he shared insights about our business over the years, and recalled some fond memories. Enjoy.

Getting His Start in the Field

When Dave started with Austin for the first 5 years, all he did was shots. Buzz (Loren) Samsel, who ran the Northeast at the time, taught Dave the technical aspects of blasting, and served as a great mentor and coach.

"I've had a lot of opportunities (at Austin)...a lot of people think that being a Blaster is like being in the factory. Although they are both important jobs and are critical to our success, they are very different. Every blast is different. There are rocks, ruts, people and a lot of different unknown risks; whereas in the factory risks are more defined," explains Dave.

Success in the field, and at Austin as a whole, depends on our People, and our ability to respect each other and work together.

Our Customers

To be able to see through the customers' lens is a gift. Some have it, and some don't. At Austin, we have been fortunate to have many people throughout the years who have been able to see things from the customer's point of view. Pat Walsh, who is now retired in Tennessee, is one of those people.

Pat made a significant impact on Dave's management and customer relationship style. Dave explains that from Pat, "I learned to be straight with customers, when the timing is right. Otherwise, don't push it.You don't want to go in with a price increase when the customer is having a bad day."

On Decision Making

Dave shared that a lot has changed over the past 45 years (and that change is mostly a good thing). "40 years ago, information wasn't freely shared. For example, with a lot of our customers blasting decisions used to be a "corporate" decision. Today, people in the field make the blasting decisions. Today, more people throughout organizations have the ability to make decisions. Now, it is important to be open, transparent and inclusive."

Dave's advice to the Austin family is to, "always make sure that you have adequate information to make a decision."

On Success at Austin

"Do your best job, EVERY DAY," shares Dave.

"It is crucial that everyone does the best job every day. If your job that day is to be the helper, not the Blaster in charge, be the best helper you can be, said Dave."

When people see that you are dedicated to doing your best on every job, you are more likely to be tapped for other interesting opportunities.

Make the Connection

Two pictures taken by Ondrej Cermak at a blast in Racov Quarry are the winners for the June Make The Connection photo contest!

E*STAR + Hydromite 70 in action. The project target was fragmentation optimization and we used Emlid, Drone and Paradigm to find the best timing for best fragmentation result.

Submit your July Make The Connection photos to maketheconnection@austinpowder.com no later than July 15.

Racov Quarry Case Study

• Location: Quarry Racov, Czech Republic
• Material: Granite
• Blasting work done by Austin Powder Service CZ s.r.o.
• Contract: Rock on the Ground
• Used products: E*STAR, Hydromite 70
• Diameter of holes: 89 mm (3.5 in)
• Burden x Spacing: 2.7 m x 2.7 m (8.9 ft x 8.9 ft)

Austin Detonator provides expertise with Paradigm, Emlid and Drone photogrammetry. E*STAR was used at that quarry to optimize fragmentation. With improved fragmentation the target was to extend the pattern.

E*STAR with the Paradigm timing optimization has been used all throughout 2019 and thus far in 2020. Results show improvement on maximum crusher input size (1 m / 3.3. ft).

Based on this result, the extended pattern should keep the same quality of delivered fragmentation.