The Swedish manufacturer said cancellation of a large machine purchase and the deferral of others saw equipment orders dip 27% in the period, compared with the previous corresponding quarter, with higher equipment service revenues and growth in the attachments and tools business lifting overall revenues, compared with the September 2018 quarter, from SEK9,651 million (US$996 million) to SEK10,158 (US$1.05 billion).

Epiroc's revenues for the first nine months of 2019 totalled US$3.15 billion compared with US$2.86 billion in the first three quarters last year.

Lindberg said Epiroc's equipment order intake in the September quarter was lower than expected, with the infrastructure market "relatively weaker than mining". He said the company was seeing significant interest in automation and information management technologies, and battery-electric mining vehicles.

"It's exciting to see that the launch of our 6th Sense automation and information management solutions received significant attention from the market and that we received multiple orders," he said.

"In Chile, we also won a large mining equipment service contract … [that] includes the opportunity in the near future to implement automation features for the customer's equipment fleet.

"The number of connected machines continued to increase at a rapid pace, and we also see strong customer interest for our battery-electric mining equipment."

Major Epiroc rival Sandvik earlier this month reported a 5% year-on-year rise in its mining equipment order intake for the September quarter from US$1.08 billion to US$1.19 billion, while quarterly revenues were up yoy to $1.21 billion from $1.12 billion.