Denis Kent, business development manager of Mine Site Technologies, the Australian supplier of the PED, takes a look at the past year.

Above, Kingston mine in Virginia

Though coal supplies were getting tight, this only flowed through to increased prices in the last few months. Budgets remain tight, even with the increased prices now, as coal operators want to finally get the bottom line looking healthy by taking advantage of productivity gains they have worked hard for over the last few years.

Hence, coal miners have not been rushing out buying a whole lot of new equipment. Every purchase has to be well justified. Despite this we have continued to install new PED systems and expand existing ones. Our best sale’s tool remain the mines that have already installed PED. The comment “Once we got PED in, I don’t know how we got by without it”, or similar, is the most common feedback. This is encouraging for a small company like MST trying to develop such a large market as the US.

BeltPED receiver on a MSA Cap Lamp Battery

A summary of the year’s highlights would include:

- The mines using PED are extremely satisfied with its contribution to the mine’s operation.

- A new system is in the process of being installed at one of the world’s most productive coal mines, Enlow Fork.

- Our first non-coal mine installation in the USA at American Rock Salt Mine in New York State.

- Our first mine in the US to use a surface antenna is US Steel’s US #50 Mine in West Virginia. Interestingly they achieved a surface antenna by utilising a disused overhead power line they already had running over the surface of the mine.

- Smaller mines, such as Pittston’s Laurel Mountain, and more recently some Coastal Coal mines justifying the installation of the PED System.

- In Canada, we are presently installing a system at Teck-Corona’s David Bell gold mine in Ontario. Apart from the use of PED for personal paging, the system will also be used for remote blast initiation via the BlastPED System.

- MSHA Approval of the BeltPED receiver to be used with MSA cap lamps. This means that the PED is now approved with over 95% of the cap lamps used in the US, being Koehler-Wheat and MSA lamps.

With the number of PED systems now installed, acceptance is anticipated to grow more quickly. As well, we will be introducing some new products, one being a remote blast initiation system for the open pit and quarry industry. Developed from our existing underground BlastPED technology, the surface system (known as BlastPED EXEL) allows for the direct initiation of signal tube (shock tube) in surface blast applications.

With all this happening we look forward to the coming 12 months as being even more interesting for MST.