FLANDERS says Highland Valley Copper’s first MD6640 drill rig with ARDVARC-enabled functionality has been installed at the Teck Resources-owned operation in British Columbia, Canada.

In an installation that involved collaboration between teams in Australia and Canada, the company was able to fit out the solution on the Caterpillar drill rig.

There are currently over 140 drills worldwide using the ARDVARC system.

ARDVARC has been used in the field for more than 15 years to convert manually-operated blast drills to remote operations. In that time, FLANDERS clients have successfully used it to drill millions of blast holes worldwide, according to the company.

“The biggest payoff we’re seeing our clients receive is improved fragmentation and between 20% to 30% productivity increases, but we do have some customers looking at it simply for the safety aspect of remote operations near highwalls,” Joshua Goodwin, Director of Autonomy, FLANDERS, said.

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