Volvo’s autonomous haulers have now moved 3 million tonnes at two Nordic mine sites

Volvo Autonomous Solutions has hauled more than 3 million tonnes of material without drivers at two Nordic sites: the Brønnøy Kalk limestone quarry in Norway and the Boliden Garpenberg mine in Sweden. The company announced the total on September 24, 2026, and Electrek’s report dates the milestone to summer.

Ingo Stürmer, chief technology officer of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, called reaching the 3 million tonne mark “an important milestone” that shows the maturity of the company’s autonomous transport solution. The release gives no split between the two sites.

Brønnøy Kalk: a five-kilometre route through tunnels

Brønnøy Kalk is the older and better-documented site. Volvo’s announcement says operations began in 2023 and that nine autonomous trucks now move material from the quarry to the crusher along a five-kilometre route that runs through long tunnels with steep inclines. That is the same stretch Volvo described in 2023, when it took the safety driver out of the cab.

That earlier step was the real threshold. In an August 30, 2023 release, Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, called removing the safety driver in an active commercial operation “a major leap for the industry,” and Raymond Langfjord, managing director of Brønnøy Kalk, said the change let the quarry capture the benefits and raise its competitiveness in a tough industry. At the time the fleet was seven Volvo FH trucks.

The first million tonnes took until 2025. A May 2025 report on that milestone put the distance at more than 220,000 kilometres, with a wheel loader operator coordinating the loading through a touchscreen. Jaeger called hauling over one million tonnes of limestone autonomously “a remarkable accomplishment,” and Langfjord said the quarry’s decision to adopt autonomy was driven by the need to improve efficiency, safety and productivity. The next 2 million tonnes, counting Garpenberg’s contribution, arrived in roughly sixteen months, though Volvo does not say how the later tonnage divides between the sites.

Garpenberg: hauling for a dam reinforcement

The second site is Boliden’s Garpenberg mine in Sweden. According to Volvo’s release, autonomous trucks there hauled material as part of a dam reinforcement project, a different task from Brønnøy Kalk’s limestone run. Boliden describes Garpenberg as an underground operation at 1,500 metres depth that produces concentrates of zinc, copper, lead, gold and silver, and says it is developing automation with partners including Volvo.

Boliden’s page does not mention the autonomous trucks or give details of the dam work, and Volvo’s release does not state how many trucks worked at Garpenberg. The pairing nonetheless shows the same system doing two unlike jobs: carrying crushed limestone through a tunnel and moving fill for a dam wall. For scale, Boliden says Garpenberg processed about 3.6 million tonnes of ore in 2025 alone, so the entire autonomous total across both sites is smaller than one year of that single mine’s ore throughput, and a reminder that the 3 million tonnes is a measure of proof rather than of volume.

Transport as a service and what is in the package

Volvo sells the system as Autona/earth, a transport-as-a-service package in which customers buy hauling capacity rather than trucks. According to the Brønnøy Kalk page, Volvo Autonomous Solutions acts as the transport provider and handles infrastructure, maintenance and fleet management. The release lists autonomy-enabled trucks with the Volvo Virtual Driver, infrastructure support, operations management, uptime services and fleet management systems, and says the trucks are built at Volvo Group’s Säffle facility to speed customer deployments.

Round-the-clock running is the commercial argument that Volvo’s Brønnøy Kalk page puts first: autonomous trucks can operate 24/7 without scheduled breaks, which lets the quarry work around the clock. In a tunnel with steep inclines, extreme weather outside and dark stretches inside, the claimed gain is as much about removing people from the hazard as about extra hours of running time.

Electrek’s coverage identifies the equipment as the A40 Electric articulated hauler, working alongside an electric wheel loader and excavator, and argues that fixed routes, heavy energy use and round-the-clock operation make mining a natural fit for autonomy and electrification. Volvo’s release itself credits the system with optimised transport flows, continuous operation and improved safety by keeping personnel out of hazardous areas.

The 2023 release spelled out the commercial shape of the deal. Rather than buying trucks outright, Brønnøy Kalk procures autonomous transport capacity as a service from Volvo Autonomous Solutions, the same arrangement Volvo now markets for other customers. The development behind it began in 2018, five years before the safety driver left the cab, which gives a sense of how slowly this kind of tonnage accumulates before a milestone like 3 million tonnes is reached.

Seven trucks in 2023, nine now: that is the only fleet count Volvo has disclosed at Brønnøy Kalk, and it has published none for Garpenberg. The company has not said whether a third site will join Norway and Sweden before the total reaches 4 million tonnes, so the next release will show whether the system is spreading or merely deepening where it already runs.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview