New Gold has been leveraging Cascadia Scientific’s Terrain solution at its Rainy River operation in gold-silver mine in Ontario, Canada, as part of its plan to optimise operations at the open-pit operations.

In the company’s just released ESG report, New Gold highlighted that the Heat Mapping module of Terrain, designed to avoid excessive fuel burn, improve operator safety, and reduce equipment maintenance costs and greenhouse gas emissions, has proven itself when used on 13 of its haul trucks.

“In August 2022, Rainy River installed the Cascadia heat mapping system in 13 of its haul trucks,” the company said. “This technology, which identifies ‘hot spots’ along the haul route, allows Rainy River to identify the areas of inefficiency and rectify them.”

Between August and December, the program supported an average fuel savings of 15%, equivalent to just over 2.7 million tonnes of CO2e, New Gold said.

Terrain is made up of tools to visualise haul roads to target interventions that reduce fuel use, GHG emissions and accelerated equipment wear. Cascadia Scientific combines high-accuracy fuel consumption data with measurements of road grade, vehicle speed, position, motion and altitude to construct visual representations of haul road networks. This helps the company continuously supports clients in identifying and correcting hot spots to maximise efficient and productive operation, it said.