Business intelligence supplier IntierraRMG and mining market research organisation The Parker Bay Company have aligned to provide Parker Bay’s mobile mining equipment database with information on surface mining equipment.

The database contains comprehensive equipment information, including the location details of more than 64 000 large pieces of mobile mining equipment currently in operation at major surface mines worldwide. The unique data sets, which are updated monthly, offer comprehensive information on equipment valued at more than $140-billion.

“The decision to supply information on surface mining equipment is important, as surface mining accounts for about 90% of global production, which includes waste and ore that are moved by the international mining industry, making it crucial to understanding trends in equipment for these operations,” says IntierraRMG commercial director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa Malin Ringdahl Stein.

This arrangement in surface mining equipment data enhances the partnership between two of the world’s major mining industry database companies. “Working together in surface equipment data is a natural extension of the partnership that IntierraRMG and Parker Bay enjoy from codeveloping the world’s leading database on underground mining equipment,” IntierraRMG MD Peter Rossdeutscher said in a media release.

Stein adds that Parker Bay had already established an important equipment database and that IntierraRMG, through its two databases, RMD and IntierraLive, monitors about 3 500 listed mining companies and 40 000 projects. “The capability of the two organisations to research equipment and usage trends is unrivalled.”

The surface mining equipment database is mine and machine specific. It identifies mines that operate large haul trucks, electric mining shovels, hydraulic shovels and excavators, wheel loaders, draglines, crawler and wheel dozers, drills and motor graders. It also canvasses all known large-scale surface coal, metallic and nonmetallic mineral mines worldwide and attempts to include every mine that operates one or more of these machine types.

There is much interest in this database, ranging from equipment manufacturers that use it to establish market share for themselves and their competitors and mining companies that wish to ascertain the most popular models and trends to the financial community that uses it to establish investment opportunities, Stein says.

“There is no other database that is anything like this. It is comprehensive and unbiased. We collect the data from a variety of sources, including the original-equipment manufacturers and the mines,” she concludes.