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Kovatera ready to tackle planet Earth with tough new mining vehicles

Greater Sudbury firm rebranding itself and ready to roll out a new line of electric mine vehicles

A longtime well-known Greater Sudbury company is rebranding as it plans to expand its mining vehicle business in the global marketplace.

Industrial Fabrication in Lively has launched its new brand name – Kovatera – for its line of underground utility vehicles, said a company news release.

Formerly marketed under the Minecat brand the company has undertaken an extensive rebranding exercise to better reflect the company’s business strategy and entry into new markets, the release said.

Going forward with the new branding the company will also be rolling out a new line of electric mine vehicles with the same purpose built, reliable and cost effective characteristics as their diesel counterparts. The new electric vehicles are in the final phase of engineering and testing, said the release.

“We have had great success in developing and marketing our product lines domestically here in Canada. The Minecat brand has developed into a very respectable brand for our space in the Canadian underground mining industry. Additional to providing ongoing support to our domestic customer base, we are now focusing on expanding our footprint into new markets such as Australia, Mexico, South America, Europe and Eurasia,” explained Will Gove, Kovatera’s general manager.

Gove also explained the meaning on the new name with Kova derived from a Finnish word for toughness and tera derived from the latin terra, meaning Earth.

“Combined, the name Kovatera reflects both our mission and the extreme environments we operate in,” said Gove.

“Given our global expansion strategy, new product development and the starting of a new lean manufacturing production line this past January, our management team felt it was time to refresh our brand to reflect these initiatives. After an extensive branding exercise, we have landed on a new name that we believe reflects the products we build and is more distinctive for the markets we are expanding into,” he added, in the release.

The new name reflects the mandate of the company to produce industry leading mine utility vehicles into one word. “Our rebranding process and research confirmed that our engineering and manufacturing point-of-difference since the company’s founding, is that we have just one mission: engineer and manufacture small footprint mine utility vehicles from the ground up, purpose built to be the toughest, most reliable and lowest total cost of ownership machines in the category.”