Overland Conveyor Company has returned to private ownership effective 12 February 2026, led by long-term employee and now shareholder-president Paul Ormsbee as it nears 30 years in the conveyor design and software market. The move separates OCC from its former corporate parent and positions its niche tools for complex overland conveyor analysis and optimisation, such as dynamic modelling and belt capacity studies, under tighter specialist control. For mine planners and materials handling engineers, this signals continuity of OCC’s technical direction with potentially faster decision-making on product development and support.

Student licences for PLAXIS and GeoStudio now apply visible watermarks to outputs, with PLAXIS marking all plots and reports and GeoStudio watermarking only exported graphics, not on-screen views. The watermark text typically includes “Student Version” or similar, cannot be removed or hidden, and persists in printed or PDF deliverables, making results unsuitable for formal design submissions, commercial reports, or regulatory approvals. Educators and students are advised to use these licences strictly for teaching, coursework, and non-commercial research, switching to full licences for any professional geotechnical design work.

Finnish aggregate equipment manufacturer Metso has added machine-learning features to its support software to predict maintenance needs and cut crusher and screen downtime by analysing operating data in real time. The system relies on continuous collection of equipment performance and fault data, raising customer concerns over how these datasets are stored, who can access them, and whether they might be shared across fleets or sites. For plant owners, the trade-off is between higher uptime and potential loss of control over sensitive production and condition-monitoring information.