The installations are fully in compliance with the outlines of the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act, enacted in 2006.

"We developed our METS system to provide underground mining operations with the safety technology needed to comply with the [act’s] tracking and communications requirements," Matrix president Aric Pryor said.

"Our METS 2.1 systems provide operators with both a vital safety tool in the event of a mine emergency and a valuable production tool that allows for efficient communications between surface and underground mining personnel."

ARLP president Joseph Craft III pointed out that the operating companies under the Alliance umbrella were among the first in the industry to adopt tracking and communications safety technology.

"With installation of the METS 2.1 systems now completed on all mining sections, Alliance operators are proud to be the first underground mining companies to fully install the post-accident communication and electronic tracking devices envisioned by the MINER Act."

To date, Matrix – an ARLP subsidiary – has sold more than 180 systems. It has added to METS the availability of post-accident atmospheric monitoring and is testing the capabilities of next-generation post-accident infrastructure and communications.

The supplier received federal approval on the low-profile reader, one-port reader and backup power unit for the system in July 2009.

Last May, it got the US Mine Safety and Health Administration green light on its 2WC-T two-way text communicator, battery-powered and featuring a full QWERTY keyboard to transmit and receive messages, and the wireless node and atmospheric monitoring components of the METS 2.1 system last May.