Suppliers News (July 09, 2007)

AMEC wins Surrey board award

British engineering firm AMEC (AMEC-L) was awarded the first Environment and Business Achievement Award — recognizing leadership in environmental issues — from the Surrey, B.C., Board of Trade.

AMEC received the award for the company’s pioneering use of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology in potential landslide areas.

AMEC partnered with the European Space Agency to monitor environmentally sensitive areas. With satellites, AMEC can detect millimetre-size land shifts near natural gas pipelines and railway tracks where trains carry hazardous substances. With notice, disasters can be averted, thereby saving lives and money while limiting harmful effects on the environment.

The award presentation was made by Dave Mowat, CEO of Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union.

“AMEC’s innovative use of this InSAR technology to help protect vulnerable landscapes is an excellent example of this necessary trend,” Mowat said.

InSAR has been used to detect ground movements along the Fraser River and through sections of B.C.’s natural gas pipeline, as well as to monitor the land around Turtle Mountain, Alta., — the site of Canada’s deadliest landslide in 1903.

It has also been used in the development of railways in Germany and the U.K., the McMicken Dam in Arizona and the Palabora open-pit copper mine in South Africa.

Engineer Drummond Cavers accepted the award on behalf of AMEC.

“InSAR is just one example of the many tools we use to increase safety and to reduce potential hazards to the environment, people, and wildlife,” Cavers said.

AMEC has held the top spot on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the past three years.

Other sustainable initiatives being undertaken by AMEC include cleaning up Canada’s worst environmental disaster, the Sydney Tar Ponds in Nova Scotia; developing GeoMelt technology to clean up the world’s largest radioactive contaminated site, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, in southeastern Washington state; and participating as one of the engineering companies involved with Ontario’s wind farms.

AMEC employs more than 20,000 people in a network of offices throughout the U.K., U.S. and Canada, as well as in regional offices and projects worldwide.

ABB wins $27M order in Sweden

Swiss firm ABB will provide Sweden’s Boliden (BLS-T, BDNNF-O) with its patented gearless drives to power two new 38-ft. autogenous grinding mills at one of Europe’s largest copper mines.

The drives will be installed at Boliden’s Aitik copper mine, located near the city of Gallevare, in northern Sweden.

At 22.5 megawatts each, the drives will likely be the most powerful anywhere in the world when they enter operation at the end of 2009. Each mill will grind as much as 2,200 tonnes of ore per hour.

Production capacity at Aitik will rise to 36 million tonnes per year from its current rate of 18 million tonnes. The expansion is expected to extend the mine’s life until at least 2025.

“ABB pioneered gearless mill drives,” says Veli-Matti Reinikkala, head of ABB’s Process Automation division. “The technology supports important mine applications like ore processing, where huge volumes and brute strength must be matched to energy efficient operation and around-the-clock reliability.”

An autogenous mill uses large pieces of ore to grind down smaller pieces by impact in a large rotating drum.

The contract with Boliden includes spare parts, network studies, installation and commissioning. The new Aitik concentrator is scheduled to start operation in 2010, and will replace the current grinding plant.

The ABB Group of companies operates in about 100 countries and employs about 109,000 people around the world.

Firm found for Fort Hills infrastructure projects

Engineering and construction firm CH2M HILL will design and build various parts of the infrastructure needed for the Fort Hills project and upgrader sites in Alberta’s Athabasca oilsands area, about 90 km north of Fort McMurray.

Engineering work is under way and is being completed from CH2M HILL’s Calgary, Alta., office. The company is based in Denver, Colo.

“Our strength to deliver their projects is based on thirty years of executing projects in Alberta,” says Rob Smith, president of CH2M HILL’s energy chemicals and industrial systems division.

Fort Hills Energy is held by Petro-Canada (pca-t, pcz-n), with 55%, UTS Energy (uts-t, ueycf-o), 30%; and Teck Cominco (tck.b-t, tck-n), 15%. Petro-Canada Oil Sands, a subsidiary of Petro-Canada, is the project operator.

CH2M Hill is an employee-owned engineering and construction company that posted revenue of US$4.5 billion in 2006 and has more than 19,000 employees in regional offices around the world. The firm’s work is concentrated in the areas of energy, industrial facilities, transportation and construction.

Seprotech teams with Raymac

Ottawa-based Seprotech Systems (SET-V), a maker of water and wastewater treatment systems, has reached a deal with Raymac Environmental Services of Nanaimo, B.C., to supply British Columbia’s miners with Seprotech water systems.

“Raymac has worked closely with us in obtaining several key projects in the mining sector and we think that our companies can do much more work together,” says Martin Hauschild, Seprotech president and CEO.

“Seprotech needs to strengthen its presence in Western Canada and this is one of the steps that we are taking.”

Raymac buys equipment from Seprotech and resells it as its own to a range of mining-related companies.

Raymac deals in water systems, wastewater systems, modular accommodations and fuel networks.

Metallica gives Washington Group the boot

Metallica Resources (MR-T, MRB-X) recently terminated a mining contract with Washington Group International (WNG-N) at the new Cerro San Pedro gold- silver mine in Mexico.

The deal ended on June 19.

Metallica Resources says its subsidiary, Mexican firm Minera San Xavier, intends to continue to operate the project through one or more other contractors.

Metallica says production from Cerro San Pedro is likely to go down until a new contractor is in place.