VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA (May 5, 2021) — Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd. (“Wenco”) is pleased to announce its purchase of all assets and intellectual property of SmartCap Technologies Pty Ltd (“SmartCap”), engineers of the world’s leading fatigue monitoring wearable.
Based in Brisbane, Australia, SmartCap assesses real-time fatigue levels and monitors for oncoming microsleeps that create safety hazards. The SmartCap device has over 5,000 users globally in mining, trucking, and other industries.
“This purchase is an important step for the continued growth of the SmartCap fatigue technology,” says SmartCap CEO Tim Ekert. “We have made significant progress these past eight years and we are proud of every safety incident our technology has prevented.
“We believe joining Wenco will enable us to grow even further and increase the safety of even more industrial operations.”
This acquisition adds a strategic, fatigue monitoring capability to Wenco’s safety solution portfolio. Safety is of paramount importance at mines and other industrial sites, where operators must perform long hours of repetitive work while paying close attention to their surrounding environment. SmartCap greatly enhances the ability of operators and other workers in proximity to the equipment to remain safe.
“Wenco has long been observing SmartCap’s success in enhancing safety for their customers, and we have been in regular discussion on how we can integrate our technologies to provide a comprehensive, next-generation safety solution,” says Andrew Pyne, president and CEO of Wenco.
“Ultimately, it was decided that bringing our technology, personnel, and business relationships together under Wenco offered the greatest opportunity for us to deliver on our mutual vision for mine safety.”
In recent years, Wenco and its parent, Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM), have invested heavily in solutions to streamline and optimize the end-to-end mining enterprise, with safety as a foundation. SmartCap adds an advanced, fatigue monitoring layer for operator protection to this digital mining initiative. It is intended to be included as part of HCM’s Solution Linkage® family, the ICT/IoT solution platform for global mining and construction customers created in response to increased demands for improved safety, life cycle cost, and productivity.
For more information about the SmartCap acquisition or Wenco’s and Hitachi’s strategic vision for mine safety, please contact info@wencomine.com.
About Hitachi Construction Machinery
Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., (TSE: 6305), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a global Construction Machinery company with approximately 24,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2019 (ended March 31, 2020) consolidated revenues totaled 931 billion yen. Hitachi Construction Machinery will focus more than ever on the Construction and Mining Machinery Business, which includes Hydraulic Excavators, Wheel Loaders, Rigid Dump Trucks, Compaction Equipment, Applications and Mine Management Systems. For more information on Hitachi Construction Machinery, please visit the company’s website at https://www.hitachicm.com/global/
About SmartCap Technologies
Life by SmartCap was developed to overcome the limitations of other fatigue monitoring technologies. Most people are aware of the dangers of driver fatigue, but our ability to recognise the signs diminishes as we become more fatigued. We believe that ultimately each and every person is primarily responsible for managing their own fatigue so our technology is designed to ensure that individuals are empowered to make this possible. Through alerts, reports, and profiles, each user will know when they are at risk and the times of the day that their risk is greatest. SmartCap helps to develop techniques to effectively manage fatigue and alarms to ensure your workforce is safe.