RICHMOND, BC, CANADA (June 2010) — Teck Coal Ltd has chosen Wenco Software for operations at Fording River located 29km northeast of Elkford, BC. Coal mined at Fording River is primarily metallurgical coal, although a small amount of thermal coal is also produced. The current annual production capacity of the mine is 8.0 million tonnes of clean coal and the preparation plant is 10 million tonnes of clean coal. Proven and probable reserves at Fording River are projected to support mining for a further 41 years.
Wenco is installing software on Fording's fleet consisting of 56 haul trucks and 13 loading units made up of 6 shovels and 7 loaders.
The system installed at Fording River was chosen for Wenco's open system architecture, allowing Teck Coal to source their own on-board hardware and install their own Cisco broadband radio system. Wenco's open system architecture coupled with its flexibility in design includes the ability to fully operate over any IP-based wireless network.
Mines today know it is imperative to optimize resource to remain competitive in the mining market. The Wenco system at Fording River, "was chosen to increase site productivity while lowering operational costs," stated Glen Trainor, North America Sales and Marketing Manager.
Fording River is the fourth Teck mine to install Wenco software, with other systems in place at Highland Valley Copper,Coal Mountain and Elk Valley Coal. Wenco is committed to helping Teck reach their operational goals and strategies.
About Teck
Teck is Canada's largest diversified mining, mineral processing and metallurgical company. Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, we are a world leader in the production of copper, metallurgical coal and zinc, a significant producer of gold, molybdenum and specialty metals, with interests in several oil sands development assets.
Collectively with its operations throughout BC and Alberta, is the world's second largest exporter of metallurgic coal, and exporter of 20% of the world's seaborne hard metallurgical coal for the international steel industry.