With the aim of ramping up production at the Detour Lake gold mine in Ontario, Canada, Agnico Eagle Mines has commissioned four Cat® 798 AC haul trucks at the open-pit operation.

These trucks, which come with a 372-t payload and are electric drive, were introduced to the market in 2019, joining the mechanical-drive Cat 797F in the 400-short-ton size class.

Agnico said these new vehicles were introduced to the fleet in the March quarter, with an additional two units planned to be commissioned in the June quarter.

In the March quarter of 2023, the Detour Lake mill set a record for first quarter throughput and activities continued to focus on mill process optimisation and improving availability with the goal of achieving and potentially exceeding throughput of 28 Mt/y. This helped the company produce 161,857 oz of gold in the three-month period.

While the company’s near-term focus is on open-pit operations at the mine, it is also looking to integrate additional drill data into a revised mineral resource model that will be used to evaluate potential underground mining scenarios.

The population of Cat 798 AC trucks has been growing in the last few years, with the Antamina, Toquepala and Cuajone copper mines in Peru. Last year, Finning announced it would deliver 13 Caterpillar 798s to Codelco’s Ministro Hales open-pit copper mine, while BHP, Caterpillar and Finning International announced, in August, that a haul truck fleet replacement process at the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper producer, would also the OEM and dealer provide Cat 798s to the operation.