Vale Inco Renews ABB Full Service Agreement For Five Years

Ongoing agreement improves productivity at nickel mine in Canada

Westerville, OH - ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, has won a renewal from Vale Inco Newfoundland & Labrador to continue managing maintenance activities at its Voisey's Bay, Labrador, Canada facility.

Under the renewal, ABB will retain responsibility for all maintenance-related activities covering production equipment at the plant. Maintenance activities will be managed to contractually-agreed targets for improvements in plant productivity and cost reduction. ABB will continue its partnership with Iskueteu, an aboriginal company providing operations support, to fulfil the agreement.

Since the start of the agreement, ABB has helped Vale Inco achieve the fastest ramp-up of all the Vale Inco greenfield sites in 2005; attain all-time production levels in 2006; achieve 1000 days with no lost time due to injury in 2007; and reach the highest tons-per-day production in 2008.

"ABB Full Service agreements help turn maintenance departments into profit centers," said Magnus Pousette, head of ABB Reliability Services North America. "By bringing proven best reliability practices to our customers, we add new value to their bottom line while they focus on their core business."

ABB has more than 150 similar strategic full service agreements with customers in the paper, mining, chemicals and oil and gas industries globally. Applying ABB best practices to maintenance operations improves the performance and reliability of production assets, increasing plant efficiency and reducing costs so that customers can focus on the their core business and add new value to their bottom line.

SOURCE: ABB