"This Award of Excellence is going to a dynamic organization that has distinguished itself by providing simple and efficient tools for valuable field data capture," said Alex Miller.  "By integrating GIS into their workflow, Les Mines Opinaca saw impressive gains in productivity, I applaud their efforts."

Les Mines Opinaca Ltée is a subsidiary of Goldcorp and operates in Quebec. Goldcorp, one of the world's largest gold mining companies, acquired Les Mines Opinaca in 2006. Goldcorp is a Canadian company with corporate headquarters based in Vancouver, Canada.  The company employs more than 9000 people worldwide and has 17 world class operations and development projects throughout the Americas.

The Éléonore property is host to the Roberto deposit, a major gold discovery located in the James Bay region of Northern Quebec.  Les Mines Opinaca decided to strip the main portion of the deposit over an area of 400m x 100m. They then reconstruct the 3D models of the mineralized zones previously defined from drilling data with the new information gained from detailed mapping of the stripped area. At the same time, most of the project property covering over 23000 hectares was mapped to help identify new drilling and exploration targets.

With only a small team of geologists to perform both tasks within three months, it was essential to automate field data entry as much as possible.  They needed a tool that the geologists could quickly begin to work with to easily capture large amounts of information in a very short period of time.  Les Mines Opinaca chose ArcPad as their mobile data entry tool.

"We are pleased that ESRI Canada chose Les Mines Opinaca Ltée as this year's winner of the Award of Excellence for the Quebec Region," declared Catherine Savard, Junior Geological Engineer, Les Mines Opinaca Ltée.  "Using ArcPad, mapping time was maximized which allowed us to better understand the development potential of the Éléonore property.   Field data capture was rapid and accurate, while data downloads and edition to the geodatabase took less than thirty minutes instead of a few hours having used traditional methods.  This meant that gathered data was ready for analysis the same day."

Ms. Savard thanked the team of geologists and Les Mines Opinaca's technical team for their enthusiasm and support.  "These teams created our project's success.  It is because of their commitment our goals were achieved."

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About ESRI Canada
Established in 1984, ESRI Canada is a Canadian owned company specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) solutions. ESRI Canada distributes the world's leading GIS software solutions from ESRI Inc., Miner and Miner, and Azteca. In order to provide organizations with complete industry-specific solutions ESRI Canada has established an extensive business partner program that includes more than 125 Canadian organizations. ESRI Canada also provides professional services including consulting, training, technical support, and enterprise GIS implementation. ESRI Canada is a leader in providing world-class enterprise GIS solutions for many industries including local government, utilities, public safety and defence, business demographics, education, natural resources, and transportation. ESRI Canada has fifteen regional offices across the country, with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, please visit http://www.esricanada.com/ or call 1-800-447-9778.

Media contacts:

Leslie Keyser
Marketing Specialist
ESRI Canada
T: 416-441-6035 ext. 6423
E: lkeyser@esricanada.com
W: http://www.esricanada.com/

Nathalie Prud'homme
Senior Project Geologist
Les Mines Opinaca
T: (403) 450-0451
E:  nathalie.prudhomme@goldcorp.com
W:  http://www.goldcorp.com/