Mine Vision Systems (MVS), an East Liberty-based startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2015, announced it has reached a multi-year contract deal to have its technology product deployed with one of the largest silver and gold mine operators in North America.
By partnering with Coeur d'Alene, Idaho-based Hecla Mining Co. (NYSE HL), MVS CEO Mike Smocer is confident that the startup's new FaceCapture mapping system will prove beneficial at two separate mining operations controlled by Hecla. With FaceCapture, MVS is able to scan, map and georeference mine faces in real-time, reducing potential production downtime for mine operators and offering higher quality information to geologists ahead of any planned future mining operations.
It's a partnership that also comes as the local, revenue-producing startup readies to begin raising for its Series A investment round by the middle of the year, which it's hoping to use the funds to scale its product for more mine operations as well as for other yet-to-be-implemented use cases. Smocer declined to disclose the company's revenue figures but noted it employs about 20 workers and is actively looking to recruit additional employees.
"We have a lot of objectives around the technology for other applications and to expand the possibilities once this data is collected; there are a lot of things that you can end up doing with it," Smocer said. "We have some pretty concrete plans about how we would like to see that unfold."
As for Hecla, the company said it's confident in the startup's tech and is looking forward to its deployment at two of its sites in Idaho.
"Our production, productivity and safety objectives are directly affected by multiple decisions we at the mine face every day," Matt Blattman, corporate director of technical services at Hecla, said in a prepared statement. "FaceCapture will allow us to process high-quality 3D mine face data in real-time, permitting our team to make critical production decisions and with reduced exposure at the mine face."
