9 / 44
CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS
OCTOBER 2016
7
DCD AND SOUTHWEST GIVE STANDALONE MUSCLE TO GRAVICO
20-yeal low for surface mining equipment
Following three years of successful col-
laboration on Gravico mining aftermarket
products, partners DCD Group and South-
west Group have consolidated the venture
into a standalone business incorporating
assets from both stakeholders.
The cooperation began in 2013 when DCD
Venco became the manufacturing partner for
Southwest’s Gravico range in Africa. Based
in the Eindhoven, Netherlands, Southwest
specialises in the engineering and develop-
ment of a wide range of mining aftermarket
products around the world. They include
backload and front-shovel buckets in capac-
ities from 7 m³ to 52 m³, dragline buckets
(30-105 m³), dump truck bowls (80-360 t) and
dragline rigging.
Speaking of the local market conditions,
Digby Glover, DCD Group CEO, says the con-
tinued decline in surface mining equipment
sales since 2012 has resulted in many origi-
nal equipment manufacturers (OEMs) taking
much of their production in-house. “This
has reduced the demand for product from
third-party manufacturers, who now have to
re-define their value offering,” says Glover.
Glover says mining companies are at the
same time looking for sustainable margin
improvements through innovation and cost
reduction. “Our commitment to Gravico ex-
presses DCD’s intent to work closely with
mining customers to help improve their
productivity with our high-quality, cost-ef-
fective solutions,” he says.
Louw Kriel, managing director of South-
west Group, says Gravico attachments
– including dragline buckets, excavator
buckets and truck bodies – have been
well-received by customers in southern
Africa in recent years. This has led to
several substantial manufacturing con-
tracts being undertaken by DCD Venco in
Newcastle, now incorporated into DCD op-
erations in Vereeniging.
b
SCAN QR CODE TO READ THE LATEST NEWS ONLINE
ELECTRA MINING NEWS IN BRIEF
Winder build for Zambian mine
Specialist manufacturer DCD Heavy
Engineering is nearing completion on
a two-year project to produce winder
drums for a copper mine in Zambia.
The contract was for two double-drum
winders for hoisting rock and two single-
drum winders for hoisting personnel. The
order also included related components
such as clutches, bearings, brake stands
and assembly. The completed man-
winder is 6,4 m in diameter and 204 t
when assembled. It can transport 141
people at a time to a depth of 1,9 km
below surface in just over two minutes.
The rock winder – measuring 7,2 m
in diameter and weighing 175 t when
assembled – collects rock from a depth
of up to 2 km; each load weighs up to
27,5 t and can be delivered in less than
two minutes.
Total wear solution for chute project
Chromium Carbide (CrC) liner expert
Rio-Carb has provided a total wear
solution for a chute project for a major
chrome mine in the Rustenburg area in
North West Province of South Africa.
This represents the first time that the
company’s chromium and manganese
impact liner plates have been applied to
the chrome mining sector. The impact of
the ore on the C22 Head Chute resulted
in significant wear and abrasion, which
meant it had to be refurbished. “This
specific chute is critical in the mine’s pro-
duction process, as it conveys all of the
run-of-mine material. Hence there is a lot
of impact,” says Karel Lewis, technical
sales consultant at Rio-Carb. The mine
had used standard 400 liner plates on
this application-critical chute in the past.
The traditional liners only lasted 12 to 18
months, whereas the total wear solution
from Rio-Carb means that the new liners
now have a minimum lifespan of five to
six years.
Optimising underground mine design
With the release of Micromine 2016,
the latest version of Micromine’s ex-
ploration and 3D mine design solution,
features have been implemented and
overhauled to assist with underground
mine design. These new and improved
features have been designed for ease
of use and allow users to take advan-
tage of the intuitive tools of Micromine
for underground mine design. The
schedule optimiser is a mathematically
proven Mixed Integer Programming
(MILP) solver that is able to provide
engineers with the optimal extraction
sequence.
b
In its recent report, The Parker Bay
Company finds that the global mining
equipment market is near a 20-year low.
The company says in its Surface Mining
Equipment Index that whether compared
to previous reports sequentially or versus
the peak levels that were recorded in 2012,
the latest reported deliveries are “dismal”.
“Annualising the latest numbers would ap-
pear to result in 2016 shipments equal to less
than one-quarter’s shipments during 2012.
And it ranks among the worst quarters in the
past 20 years,” says the company. “There are
several mining industry measures that ap-
pear to indicate an end to the industry-wide
contraction, but these are certainly not yet
reflected in equipment shipments tracked by
Parker Bay.”
The PBCo Mining Equipment Index is a
measure of the quarterly evolution of surface
mining equipment shipments worldwide. It
relies on data from Parker Bay’s Mobile Mining
Equipment Database and encompasses the
same product range covered by the Database
(all products are included except draglines
whose low volume, high dollar value, long lead
time sales can cause fluctuations that don’t
reflect the quarterly changes in the market).
The index utilises the value of equipment
as opposed to number of units such that one
$10 million excavator has the same weight
as five $2 million trucks. Values are not based
on the price of each unit as sold but instead
an approximate value assigned to machines
by size class and product expressed in
constant dollars.
b
New report suggests that
global surface mining
equipment sales are at a 20-
year low.