Privately-owned mining contractor Doug Hood Mining Limited has chosen Immersive Technologies to supply a range of Advanced Equipment (AE) Simulators as part of a business improvement strategy that will see the simulators used to improve training, safety, drive reductions in unscheduled maintenance and extend tire life.

The decision to purchase the two base simulators, three simulator modules (Caterpillar 777D Truck, Hitachi Excavator and Light Vehicle) and two comprehensive training packages followed a thorough examination of the technology which has been proven to reduce training times and cost, while improving operator safety and productivity.

Following thorough due diligence, Doug Hood Mining chose to take advantage of Immersive Technologies’ mining experience, together with the multiple exclusive OEM alliances, extensive product range and dedicated post sale support.

Doug Hood Mining’s General Manager, Kevin Davies said “We intend utilising our simulator for pre-employment assessments, new operator inductions, and the re-assessment of existing operators. We expect these training applications will have a significant positive impact on operator skill levels, site safety and the overall productivity.

Immersive Technologies East Asia Pacific Region Manager, Mark Eaton-Reid said “This investment by Doug Hood Mining represents the first high-fidelity training simulator to be implemented in New Zealand, and as such will provide unique opportunities to extrapolate unbiased and measurable training data which can be transferred up into business improvement projects.”

The new simulators will be located in the town of Westport, supporting the Stockton Mine, currently New Zealand’s largest Opencast Coalmine. Doug Hood Mining Ltd has been contracted to perform opencast coal mining and associated works at the Stockton Mine for Solid Energy NZ since 2003.

This sale now takes Immersive Technologies’ Advanced Equipment Simulator population to over 450 modules in 25 countries.

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About Immersive Technologies

Immersive Technologies is the world's largest, proven and tested supplier of surface and underground Advanced Equipment Simulators to the global mining industry. The company has achieved this unique position by focusing on its mission to make every mining and earthmoving equipment operator in the world safer and their employer more profitable through its simulation technologies. Immersive Technologies' Advanced Equipment Simulators are helping hundreds of mining companies around the world to increase their equipment operators' safety and site profitability through effective simulation training.

Immersive Technologies provides its customers with the most effective Advanced Equipment Simulators available. This is made possible through the formal exclusive licensing and technical information alliances Immersive has established with the leading Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), including: Caterpillar, Hitachi, Komatsu and Liebherr. These unique alliances provide Immersive Technologies with exclusive access to the OEM's proprietary and confidential machine technical information that is required to correctly simulate the OEM's machines and is not available through other public or dealer channels.

With advanced simulator modules deployed in 39 countries, Immersive Technologies is dedicated to provide outstanding service. To deliver on this commitment the company has customer sales and support offices located close to its customers in Perth and Brisbane Australia, Salt Lake City USA, Calgary, Ottawa & Vancouver Canada, Monterrey Mexico, Lima Peru, Santiago Chile, Bochum Germany, Johannesburg South Africa, Jakarta Indonesia, Kolkata India and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Immersive has the global mining experience, innovative technology, product range, OEM relationships, proven support commitment and industry vision to partner with you to ensure your simulator training solution delivers the significant results you expect.