MINING TYRES
years. Under the licence, ATMS will offer
Bridgestone customers worldwide tyre monitoring
systems for all off-the-road (OTR) vehicles based
upon iTrack technology. Transense will receive
quarterly royalty payments based upon the
number and classification of vehicles upon which
the iTrack technology is deployed over a ten year
period.
Nigel Rogers, Executive Chairman of Transense
commented: "These arrangements further
demonstrate the position of iTrack as a globallypreferred
provider of tyre management solutions
for the off-the-road (OTR) vehicle market, which
we believe will achieve even greater success with
Bridgestone."
As an example of iTrack’s recent successes, in
2018, the current version iTrack II was fitted to 41
haul trucks at Nordgold’s Bissa mine in Burkina
Faso then in 2019, Transense won a contract to
supply 24 iTrack II mining tyre monitoring systems
including the full suite of data analytics for large
haul trucks at Southern Copper’s Cuajone mine in
Peru. Also in 2019, Transense announced that it
had received an order from a new customer with
respect to 50 iTrack II units for installation in
mines in North America. The customer referred to
in that announcement was a subsidiary of
Bridgestone and this led to the collaboration
agreement which has now led to the acquisition.
That agreement saw Bridgestone agree to offer
the iTrack system exclusively as a mining tyre
monitoring system for tyres 57 in and above for its
OTR customers. Translogik agreed that it would
not contract with any other tyre manufacturer for
the provision of the iTrack system for tyres 57 in
and above for the term of the agreement.
Goodyear invests big in OTR testing
facilities
Last October, Goodyear announced that it was
adding a second vehicle dynamics area – a
324,000 square foot paved pad – and that it was
building an additional evaluation facility for offthe-road
products that includes state-of-the-art
equipment for testing
the industry's largest
earthmover tyres.
These are located at
its largest tyre
evaluation centre which
was set up in 1944 in
San Angelo, Texas and
Goodyear built its first
test surface there in
1957. The San Angelo
Proving Grounds facility,
with an assortment of
tracks and test labs,
provides the company
with the ability to conduct extensive on- and offroad
testing.
"This enormous testing facility is vital to
Goodyear's product development process, and we
are continuing to invest in its capability to bring
innovative tyres to customers," said Chris Helsel,
Goodyear's Chief Technology Officer. "Countless
applications in consumer and commercial tyres,
including the use of unique sustainable materials,
advanced fuel efficiency technologies and even
tyres that can operate with no air have been
tested at San Angelo."
The San Angelo facility covers 7,250 acres and
includes 58 miles of roads and track, 14 miles of
fence and more than 200 test vehicles. Associates
there test approximately 20,000 tyres annually.
Goodyear has taken its mining tyre testing to
the next level by acquiring a Hitachi EH4000
haul truck to run at its San Angelo, Texas
facility