Alastri was founded in 2012 by Perth-based mining engineers Daniel Narayan and Max Bygraves. They wanted to build an open-pit mine planning software that was fast, visually stunning, user friendly and could model complex open pit mines.
Over the past nine years it grew from its Perth, Western Australia head office to build a position in the open pit metals mining industry with software products that cover daily scheduling through to life of mine planning.
Micromine CEO Andrew Birch told Australia's Mining Monthly in July that thanks to its cash flow and support from the private equity firm that took a majority position in it about two years ago, the company had a war chest to make acquisitions if the right one came along.
Alastri obviously meets those criteria.
Birch said Alastri's software was a complimentary offer to the Precision Mining business it bought in June to provide a leading position in the scheduling market.
With the Precision buy Micromine gained the mine scheduling product Spry, which should fit between its eponymous three-dimensional mine design product and its mine production, planning and management tool Pitram.
"Rather than starting from scratch and building products in competition, we are looking for best in class companies that have proven products and want to grow," he said.
"Micromine's international footprint, with more than 2000 sites in 90 countries, represents 35 years of growth and investment that is very difficult for new companies to emulate.
"This way we bring new products to our clients faster and give great Australian technology the opportunity to flourish, with the backing of our global distribution, implementation and support teams.
"Miners today want software that is powerful, appealing to use, and easy to integrate. Gone are the days of standalone systems that don't talk to each other.
"By growing our suite of products in this way we can ensure each one plays to its unique strengths while introducing a high level of interoperability aligned with the core Micromine platform."
Alastri cofounder and managing director Daniel Narayan said its products would continue to be supported and sold under the existing Alastri brand.
"We had a strong vision when we started the company and are looking forward to seeing how far we can take that now, with the backing and resources of a market leader like Micromine," he said.
"By concentrating exclusively on open pit metals mining, we have been able to build higher-level software that enables mining engineers to think like mining engineers, not programmers."
