Site profile 

Chelopech, DPM Metal’s flagship asset, was acquired in 2003 and is located in Bulgaria, an EU-member country. The underground copper-gold mine is situated approximately 75 kilometers east of the capital city of Sofia and has been transformed by DPM into a world-class operation with leading operational and environmental performance.

Chelopech is a leader in digital innovation, achieving significant improvements in efficiency, environmental performance and worker safety. The mine has 100% reliable underground Wi-Fi coverage at 600 meters below ground level, and, in 2019, commissioned the industry’s first deep learning autonomous drone working in an underground environment.

The situation

DPM is advancing its digital transformation at the Chelopech mine, replacing paper-based processes with modern digital solutions to improve the speed, accuracy, and reliability of operational information. In drill-and-blast execution, information was historically managed through handwritten notes, manual records, and delayed sharing. This created friction in cross-functional coordination and limited timely visibility for engineers and control functions.

In parallel, the operation’s focus on disciplined management routines increased the need for faster, more consistent drillhole-level data capture and shared awareness underground. 

Against this backdrop, DPM Chelopech introduced BlastIQ™ Underground, now live on site, to digitise drillhole-level execution and enable near-real-time operational control and continuous improvement.

Technical solutions

DPM Chelopech implemented BlastIQ™ Underground, a cloud-based data storage and management system that brings together blast design, drillhole QA/QC capture, reporting and analytics into a single, connected workflow.

Operationally, the end-to-end workflow was established as follows: engineers import stope and ring designs into the BlastIQ™ Underground desktop application and field teams use BlastIQ™ Mobile enabled tablets to record conditions, measurements, drilling and loading data. Enabled by full network coverage, data uploads to the cloud for review via web dashboards and integrates directly with existing desktop tools and systems.

The BlastIQ™ Underground solution was also positioned as an enabler of disciplined execution by strengthening handovers and visibility across drill crew, charging/blasting team, mining engineering, and SIC/SMART Centre.

"Our transformation began in 2009 and is part of the company’s broader effort to modernise mining practices and create more consistent, data-driven ways of working from planning, through task assignment, to execution
reporting. At Chelopech, one of the latest examples of this change is the introduction of BlastIQ, Orica Digital Solutions’ blast management solution for real-time transparency and short-interval control. The solution proved to be a perfect fit to our global tools’ standardisation initiative targeted at taking data utilisation to the next level."

Tsvetomir Velkov
VP Technical Services, DPM Metals

The result

The BlastIQ™ Underground project objective at Chelopech was to implement a solution to efficiently and safely conduct quality control on production drill holes while enabling centralised access to short and long-term analysis. The implementation delivered concrete outcomes:

• Deployment and adoption: BlastIQ™ Underground was deployed to all production drills and shotfirers, and QA/QC is now being captured across all active blasts.
• Capability building: training was delivered to ~40 personnel.
• Operational visibility & analytics: SMART Centre operators were provided access, and the BlastIQ™ web portal plus Power BI dashboards enabled daily/shift visibility on drilling, hole preparation, and loading activities using BlastIQ™ Mobile data. Furthermore, seamless integration was introduced between the existing SIC application (Deswik.Ops) and BlastIQ™ enabling single source of truth and consistent tool for monitoring and reporting.
• Information quality and decision speed: capturing data digitally at the source reduces delays, transcription mistakes, and misunderstandings, supporting quicker fact based decision-making and shared up-to-date information across stakeholders.
• Rapid rollout: the rollout reached full-scale operation in just over two weeks.

In summary, BlastIQ™ Underground replaced fragmented information flows (paper, radio, multiple tools) with a drillholelevel digital source of truth, strengthening near-real-time visibility and closing the loop between design and execution.

For the workforce, the change also reflects a broader shift in expectations. Digital tools are increasingly seen not as an added extra, but as a normal part of efficient operations. By replacing paper with digital solutions, DPM Metals is helping create a workplace where information is easier to capture, easier to share, easier to trust and used for decision making.

In this way, BlastIQ™ Underground is not just a digital tool, but a foundational capability supporting Chelopech’s broader digital transformation and its ambition to operate as a modern, high-performing underground mine.

Acknowledgements

Orica Digital Solutions wishes to thank Chelopech and DPM Metals for their collaboration in producing this case study, and for their support and permission to publish it.

Author: Nikolay Kirov, Director Operations Design at DPM Metals.
Date: April 2026