Gaby to improve efficiency, productivity of automated truck fleet

Chile's Gaby copper mine and heavy equipment supplier Komatsu have announced they will carry out a three-month planned stoppage of the mine's automated truck fleet to improve its management system, a source at Gaby told BNamericas. The stoppage will be effective from August to October, during which the trucks will be operated by drivers and Komatsu will implement a new service platform for the trucks in order to further improve efficiency and productivity. Gaby, fully owned by state copper producer Codelco, is the world's only mining operation in which the transportation of extracted ore is 100% handled by automated trucks, which started operating at the same time as the mine in 2008. Gaby's fleet is comprised of 12 trucks controlled from an operations center. The fleet is expected to grow to 15 trucks by February 2011, as the company is currently working on a US$190mn project to expand production capacity from the current 150,000t/y to 170,000t/y of fine copper in the form of cathodes. Codelco's newest mine is an open pit operation located in northern region II, holding 618Mt of reserves with an average grade of 0.41%. The mine produced 28,000t of copper cathodes in Q1. In 2009, the mine produced 148,000t at a cash cost of US$0.97/lb in its first year of full operations. Komatsu is the only producer of automated heavy trucks for use in mining.