Highland Valley Copper Chooses Wenco

The system selected by Highland Valley Copper consists of a mine-wide MESH broadband communication network, FleetControl and MineVision dispatcher tools for real-time monitoring and automatic dispatching, WencoDB open database, plus 75 units of onboard hardware and software for the entire truck, shovel, loader, drill and support equipment fleet.

Operations at Highland Valley Copper began over 20 years ago by predecessor companies. The present operation is a combination of the Lornex mine and mill, the Valley Copper ore body and the Highmont mill. An open pit, truck/shovel operation, Highland Valley Copper is a low grade, low strip mine with one permanent crusher and two semi-mobile in-pit crushers feeding an 18,000-tonne per hour conveying system that delivers ore to stockpiles at the mill. Teck Cominco announced that it will proceed with a plan to extend the mine life of the Highland Valley Copper mine by approximately 4 years to September 2013.

“Highland Valley Copper is very clear on what they want from a system, and has expressed these requirements openly throughout the entire evaluation process,” states Glen Trainor, Account Executive of Wenco, “and Wenco was able to meet all their requirements. With our 20 years experience in fleet management combined with Highland Valley Copper’s dedication and expertise, we believe the mine will be able to improve their systems integration while increasing productivity and improving quality control.”

Highland Valley Copper was looking to upgrade or replace their old fleet management system with a product that could meet their needs for dispatching, system openness and integration, ease of future upgrades, and timely, knowledgeable support. The Wenco system meets all of these needs. Wenco has also proposed to import historical data from the existing proprietary database and store it in Wenco’s MS SQL Server database (WencoDB).

The mine-wide MESH communications network will be installed ahead of time in the third quarter of 2006, while the core Wenco system is scheduled for installation in the fourth quarter.

For more information visit www.wencomine.com

About Highland Valley Copper
Highland Valley Copper is located in south central British Columbia, Highland Valley Copper is Canada’s largest non-ferrous metal mine. Owned 97.5% by Teck Cominco, the operation has a workforce of 880 and makes a significant economic contribution to a number of local communities.

About Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd.
Wenco provides GPS-based fleet management systems for open pit mines worldwide. The system provides sophisticated automatic dispatching to maximize production while delivering specified ore qualities, plus high precision GPS applications for the positioning and guidance of excavators, dozers and drills. The products and services include real-time control and reporting software, an Oracle© or MS SQL Server© database, Windows-based computer terminals for mobile equipment, a broadband radio communications infrastructure, as well as installation, training and commissioning services.