Finning (Canada), has secured an extension of its exclusive supplier agreement with Coal Valley Resources and Prairie Mines & Royalty to 2015. These two are collectively the largest producers of thermal coal in Canada. They operate 10 surface mines located in the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan producing bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite thermal coals. The company has also been awarded a renewal of its current lease agreement with Teck Coal.

Outotec has strengthened its service business by acquiring Millteam Sweden, a company employing 35 people that has expertise in grinding mills servicing and installation. This acquisition supports Outotec’s strategy to expand its service business, with its new centre in Sweden providing better life-cycle facilities for its customers in Europe and the CIS.

A coal-drying technology that will extract more energy from high moisture coal at less cost and simultaneously reduce potentially harmful emissions is ready for commercial use after successful testing at a Minnesota electric utility. The DryFining^TM technology - developed with funding from the first round of the US Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) - uses waste heat from a power plant to reduce the moisture content of lignite, whilst also segregating particles by density. This means a significant amount of higher density compounds containing sulphur and mercury are sorted out and returned to the mine, rather than oxidised in the boiler.

March 16 saw the centenary of the discovery of a rich copper ore deposit in Outokumpu in the eastern part of Finland. This discovery led to the establishment of Outokumpu Oy and a booming mining industry in Finland. Over the years, Outokumpu has experienced a major transformation, evolving from a mining and multi-metal company to one of the world’s leading producers of stainless steel.

Bucyrus has delivered five CL10C compact loaders to China Shenhua Energy Co for operation in the longwall mines managed by Shenhua Shenfu-Dongsheng Coal Co. The 10 t capacity loaders are the first electronically controlled diesel vehicles supplied to the Chinese underground coal mining industry. They are designed to raise loads to a height of 1 m directly onto the cookie plate via the hydraulic winch, and can be used in a wide range of applications including general mine transportation and maintenance work, longwall installations and relocations, cabling and piping installation and stone dusting.