Mining Foundation of the Southwest

In 1970 A. Frederick Banfield and William L. Meyer founded Mintec, Inc. providing computer aided consulting services for geologic modeling and mine planning. By developing a sophisticated mine planning software, the mining world was provided tools to automate and assist modeling and engineering tasks faced by mining engineers and geologists. Mintec expanded it’s business by selling the software.

Over the years, the software has become easier to use and is used not only in mine evaluation, but also at operating mines for reserve calculations, short-range and long-range planning, and surveying.

As advances in computer technology have increased, Mintec has been able to make sophisticated tools available on personal computers. Mintec is continuing to add state-of-the-art tools to our computer software, MineSight^®: a 3-D visualization and CAD program; Lerchs-Grossmann pit design algorithm; ore control and survey systems; Interactive Graphics Planner; indicator kriging; acQuire™ database management; solid/solid intersection functions; conditional simulation; state of the art pit expansion function; MineSight^® Compass™; and MineSight^® version 2.5.

Mintec’s principle business remains the development, expansion, and support of our software. As part of that process, Mintec continues to apply the software to consulting projects. To support the more than 300 mines and consulting groups that use MineSight^®, Mintec maintains a staff of more than 40 in offices in Calgary, Alberta; Tucson, Arizona; Vancouver, British Columbia; Santiago, Chile; Lima, Peru; and Johannesburg, South Africa. Mintec is proud of its staff and their experience. Most of the technical staff has been with the company over 10 years.

There are new challenges as information technology has created the possibility of data being shared throughout mining operations and Mintec is working to make it’s databases capable of exchanging data with other applications..

Mintec intends to continue to provide state-of-the art software to the mining industry for at least another 30 years.

Mining Foundation of the Southwest
P.O. Box 42317
Tucson, Arizona 85733
Tel: 520-577-7519
Fax: 520-577-7073
E-mail: admin@miningfoundationsw.org