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May 2016
MODERN MINING
35
MODULAR PLANTS
feature
Left:
A 10 t/h hard rock and
wash plant combination
from APT for gold recovery.
Below:
An RG100 10 t/h
scrubber wash plant.
that we can offer customers. We also have rep-
resentation in 47 countries worldwide and have
supplied plants to – among others – Malaysia,
the Philippines, Indonesia, Afghanistan, many
countries in South America and most of the
mining countries within Africa itself. In all, we
have plants operating in over 25 countries.”
Interestingly, the company recently sup-
plied its first plant in Western Europe – to the
Cononish gold project of Scotgold Resources in
Scotland. “This is a small – 1,5 t/h – but com-
plex plant and is designed to be able to grow as
the project grows,” says McFarlane. “Cononish
will be Scotland’s first gold mine so the project
is quite high profile.”
While small plants in the 3 to 20 t/h range
are at the heart of APT’s offering, the company
is capable of providing plants with much big-
ger capacities. “Starting roughly four years
ago, we started to discern a growing demand
for larger plants, probably reflecting the dry-
ing up of funding in the junior mining sector,”
says McFarlane. “We were being approached by
juniors who liked our products – in particular
the way they were priced and their modular
design philosophy allowing easy expansion
– but needed them upscaled to handle higher
tonnages and a full range of ore types from
oxides through transitional material to sul-
phides. So we now offer plants – we call them
Combo plants – that go well beyond the 20 t/h
capacity that used to be the upper limit of our
range and, in fact, we’ve quoted on installations
as big as 250 t/h.”
As examples of APT’s ability to meet the
requirements of bigger projects, McFarlane
points to two current contracts. “We’re pres-
ently supplying a 120 t/h plant to Piran
Resources for a tin project it has in Rwanda and
this will be delivered to site shortly,” he notes.
“We’ve also just commissioned a 40 t/h CIL
plant for CATA Mining Company’s new gold
mine in the Mara region of Tanzania.”
While it originally made its name in gold
processing, APT products can treat most ores.
“We don’t do anything in coal and we’re not
involved in some of the bulk hard rock com-
modities such as iron ore and manganese but