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COVER STORY
June 2016
MODERN MINING
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The DB120 with a tracked drill rig ‘on board’.
mobility
for tracked machines
significantly reduced, while fuel costs are also
lowered.” He adds that the Sleipner system
itself requires little maintenance, as it consists
of only about 100 parts and incorporates no
high-tech systems to go wrong.
Since the late 1990s, Sleipner has consider-
ably broadened the range of what it calls its
E-series (the ‘E’ standing for ‘excavator’) and
now offers units able to handle excavators rang-
ing from 30 tonnes through to 565 tonnes. Two
new models – the 600-tonne and 800‑tonne
class Sleipners – are in development and will
be released to the market in due course. There
are a multitude of excavator-truck combina-
tions possible for each E-series model. For
example, the top-of-the-line Sleipner E550
can accommodate excavators such as the 533-t
Hitachi EX5600 or the 565-t Cat 6060 with the
trucks used for towing typically being ‘ultra’
size machines such as the Komatsu 960E or the
Cat 797 (which have 327-t and 363-t payloads
respectively).
In the African region, many mines use the
E-series system including First Quantum’s
Kansanshi and Sentinel copper mines in
Zambia, AngloGold Ashanti’s Geita mine in
Tanzania, Debswana’s Orapa diamond mine
Loading a dozer onto a DB120 takes just minutes.
in Botswana, Katanga Mines in the DRC and
Assmang’s Khumani and Beeshoek iron ore
mines in South Africa. Open-pit mining con-
tractors have also embraced the technology,
among them Diesel Power in South Africa,
U&M in Zambia, and African Mining Services
in Ghana.
While the success of Sleipner has been
founded on the E-series, the company in
2014 added another major product to its line-
up. “The E-series caters only for excavators,”
explains Hollins. “Customers were delighted
with the way the E-series models performed but
also wanted a system that would allow tracked
bulldozers and drill rigs to be transported con-
veniently. In response to this request, Sleipner’s
engineers in Finland came up with the DB120
transport system. The ‘DB” stands for ‘drill and
bulldozer’ while the ‘120’ in the designation