TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The Krasnoyarsk division of Russian miner Polyus Gold has chosen Wenco International Mining Systems to supply its high-precision machine guidance systems for shovels and drills at three mine sites in Eastern Siberia.

Wenco, a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery, had been providing the fleet management system (FMS) at Polyus's Olimpiada mine since 2008. Within the first year, shift productivity of shovels increased up to 12.27%, while shift productivity of trucks increased up to 10.47%.

These successful results led to further FMS installations at the corporation's Titimukhta mine in 2009 and its Blagodatnoye mine in 2012. Together, these sites operated more than 150 mobile mining units across three openpits.

"Polyus evaluated the potential effectiveness of Wenco's BenchManager high-precision on-board system and selected the system as a result," Wenco regional manager for the commonwealth of independent states Iosif Tabakman stated.

BenchManager used global navigation satellite system positioning to precisely determine the shovel's orientation and dig limits, providing operators with accurate, real-time face positions and cut/fill information. It paired with BenchView office software, which managed files and gave engineers real-time mining progress data to assist in planning.

Along with BenchManager, Wenco had also been contracted to provide its drill navigation guidance system to the Blagodatnoye mine. This site operated several Atlas Copco DML/LP drills to handle the site's extensive drilling and blasting needs. The northern climactic conditions at this site required Polyus machine operators to rapidly and safely navigate their drills to target without lengthy field surveying.

The BenchManager and Drill Navigation systems would also be installed at the Blagodatnoye mine by the end of 2015.