Citect secures $11m Rio Tinto contract

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 11 October 2005 10:00

IT Industry - Listed Tech

Manufacturing software supplier, Citect (ASX:CTL), and project management partner Calibre Controls have won a deal with Rio Tinto to provide software and services for a mine utilisation improvement project in Pilbara Iron's Paraburdoo mine, WA.

The objective of the $11 million project is to restore the mine's throughput to the design capacity of 22 million tonnes of per year. Phase 1 is due for completion this month.

'The (Citect) Ampla MES technology allows our plant management access to a single reporting dashboard from which they can visualise and act on plant and operational performance data. This helps us to measure how effective our assets are, to benchmark those assets against rated performance, and to identify areas for business improvement,' said Mike Westerman, mine operations manager, Paraburdoo, Pilbara Iron, Rio Tinto.

Accounting for $1 million of the project, Citect's Ampla software will be used to replace the mine's existing plant downtime and production monitoring system. Calibre will install the Ampla Performance suite consisting of Downtime, Production and Metrics modules, to provide real-time intelligence on operational performance, production and lost time in a consolidated format to key personnel throughout the plant.

This is the first Ampla order Calibre Controls has received since becoming the first Gold Citect Integration Partner to complete training for Ampla in August.

'From our experience, there are many mining operations that can experience significant production gains and business efficiency improvements, from implementing technologies like Ampla", said Steve Hannah, general manager of Calibre Controls.

"In working closely with our clients, we are able to demonstrate to them these expected improvements and their return on investment."

CTL shares closed 3.5c higher at 93.5c in light trading.