NEW ZEALAND QUARRYING & MINING Volume 11 - No 4 | August - September 2014 | $8.95
Investing in Sandvik
Why Road Metals invested in a new Sandvik QH3331 hydrocone mobile crusher
QUARRYNZ 2014
Pictorial coverage of the 2014 IoQ/AQA conference in Whangarei
AN AWARD WINNING WETLAND PROJECT Recognising environmental sensitivity at Baldwin Quarry in the Waikato
AN INTREPID MINING STORY
Quenching the fires at the old Strongman mine is ongoing
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NEW ZEALAND QUARRYING & MINING Volume 11 - No 4 | August - September 2014 | $8.95
INSIDE UPFRONT
16
4 Editorial 6-13 News, views, comments, and reports from across the quarrying and mining sectors FEATURES
16 Quarrying – Gold for wetlands project 18 Quarrying – Asphalt demand drives chip plant design 20 Conference: QuarryNZ 2014 in pictures 26 Mining – An intrepid history 30 Mining – Perserverance wins the gold 34 Technology – Offshore mining opportunity goes to court 36 Wheels in the workplace
20
COMMENT
38 Andy Loader – Quarries should brace for change ON THE COVER
14 Investing in Sandvik WRAP UP
39-40 Innovations 40 Advertisers’ Index
26
ON THE COVER: Why Road Metals invested in a new Sandvik QH3331 hydrocone mobile crusher. See story page 14
30 Q&M August - September 2014 3
F R O M
T H E
E D I T O R
NEW ZEALAND QUARRYING & MINING
Q&M covers news, views and trends from the extractive industries, along with features on projects and people in the industry.
PUBLISHER
They said it up North There were some good presentations at the QuarryNZ 2014 conference up at Whangarei – especially from the new WorkSafe chief inspector for extraction Tony Forster; Les McCracken; and MP Simon Bridges, who is a John Key clone and even sounds like him. Bridges did a good job endorsing the industry through the Government’s national roading schemes and was surprisingly well versed on the proposed quarry guidelines and its process. “You told us to remove quarries from mining,” he said. “We did. “You asked for more inspectors with experience and you asked for clear guidelines, and I am told this is happening.” He also hit a nerve reassuring delegates that the loathed RMA (another ‘unique’ piece of Kiwi legislation that sounds good, but has proved more effective as a money maker for the legal industry than protecting the environment) will be simplified and more targeted. Throw the dam thing into the bin, I say, and just copy what the Aussies do – as we have with the likes of health and safety in the workforce and e-waste. On the subject of our Tasman neighbours – the minister managed to diss their country by saying 90 percent of it is “dry and ugly” (the land not the Aussies), compared to good-ole-Gods zone, which is just so pristine that it needs extra protection. That doesn’t explain why Australia has 19 protected UNESCO World Heritage Sites and we only have three? Tony Forster is another chap not shy of the stage and he put on two rewarding performances – one as the new chief inspector extractives for WorkSafe and another at the Transdiesel award dinner where he presented the Winstone Safety Award to Johnny Dickson in good humour. During his safety presentation to quarry delegates Tony put a strong emotive angle on Pike River and the 29 that were killed in the mine; particularly the younger ones who had their lives cut short. Point taken, but Pike was a working, underground, coal mine (a gaseous one at that), not a quarry, and the Government has recognised the separation of quarrying from mining in its proposed guidelines. Les McCracken from Minex presented a study that featured statistics indicating that the quarrying industry had five times the accident rate of other industries; while mining had twice as many accidents. On the face of it – very concerning, but it also asks the question – how many quarries did the survey cover? And how many of the accidents recorded were distinctly quarry activities and, say, not involved with transport? As usual in the extraction industry – plenty of room for ongoing discussion. Alan Titchall, Editor
Contrafed Publishing Co Ltd Suite 2.1, 93 Dominion Road, Mt Eden 1024 PO Box 112357, Penrose, Auckland 1642 Phone: 09 636 5715 Fax: 09 636 5716 EDITOR
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Design: Tracey Asher, TMA Design Printing: Client Focused Solutions Ltd 027 255 1818 Contributions welcomed. Please contact the editor before sending them in. Articles in NZ Quarrying & Mining are copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission of the publisher. Opinions expressed in this magazine are VISIT THESE WEBSITES Aggregate & Quarry Association www.quarrying.org.nz Institute of Quarrying (NZ) Inc www.ioqnz.co.nz New Zealand Minerals Industry Association www.straterra.co.nz Extractive Industries Training Organisation www.mito.org.nz NZ Contractors’ Federation www.nzcontractors.co.nz Roading New Zealand www.roadingnz.org.nz NZ Ready Mixed Concrete Association www.nzrmca.org.nz InfraTrain New Zealand www.infratrain.co.nz ISSN 0110-1382
4 August - September 2014 Q&M
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U P F R O N T
A new gold mine for Southland Sam March Director and Noel Becker Mine Manager
The Waikaia Gold Mine was officially opened at Freshford near Waikaia on Friday November 15, 2013, witnessed by a large gathering of about 200 people, including locals, politicians and guests. After which operations began after four years of planning, testing, preparing for land use, applying for the necessary resource consents, and raising the necessary capital to start the operation. It was not an inexpensive venture; costing the company about $15 million to begin gold extraction. The Freshford area had been prospected in the 1990s by Eureka
10,000th ounce of gold. The company estimates that its operation can produce between 16,000 to 20,000 ounces annually over a seven-year period. However, it appears production figures have recorded a significantly higher tally than this. Currently the company employs 20 fulltime workers and three casuals – all recruited locally from northern and eastern Southland. The mine’s gold recovery plant is named after Alexander
Mining and L&M Mining, but with the machinery available at that
McGeorge, as a tribute to the man who mined the same rivers
time, mining would not have been viable. Waikaia Gold used data
around Waikaia and Freshford over 50 years ago.
accumulated by those two companies when considering whether the project was viable. The company is headed by Sam and Buzz March who have had
He and his brothers had worked three dredges in the district until 1926. The McGeorges were pioneers in some aspects of the mining industry. They implemented the raising, draining and
many years of experience in working with heavy machinery in
re-soiling of land over which the dredges passed. Alexander
earthworks. They are directors of Waikaia Gold along with Warren
McGeorge is also credited with adapting and refining an innova-
Batt who has had considerable experience in gold exploration and
tive method for separating soil and tailings.
extraction. These men bought up the shares in the company and persuaded a number of outside investors to join them. Now the Freshford operation by Waikaia Gold is moving
The gold recovery plant (built on the site) operates in a pit, almost non-stop, some 15 metres below ground level. According to Buzz March, everything extracted from the pit is stockpiled and the pit refilled as the company’s gold mining
towards being the second largest gold mining operation in the
operation moves up the Freshford Valley towards the Waikaia
country. In its first year of operations, the company has worked
Township. He says the processing plant floats in the pit and at
almost two million cubic metres of earth and recently mined its
the same time extracts gold.
Real Steel appointed as Esco dealer Real Steel has signed a dealership agreement with Esco
plate and wear parts and the new arrangement gives Kiwi customers
Corporation, a US-based designer and maker of engineered wear
full access to Esco’s wear product range, including the Ultralok
parts and replacement products used in mining, construction,
hammerless tooth system, noted for its safety and performance for
industrial, and oil and gas applications.
use in small- to medium-sized loading units.
The company operates in 28 countries on six continents,
“I am very pleased to welcome Luke Mathieson and his team
including an expansive network of 27 manufacturing facilities and
into the Esco family,” says Steve Lennard, Esco managing
more than 50 sales and distribution offices.
director for Australasia.
Wellington-based and family-owned Real Steel is also a specialist in the design, build and supply of high strength and wear resistant 6 August - September 2014 Q&M
“Luke’s leadership skills, industry experience and strong customer relationships will ensure a smooth transition for our customers.”
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U P F R O N T
Opening day in Orange Orange is a city in the central west region of NSW, about 206 kilometres from Sydney, best known as the birthplace of Aussie poet Banjo Paterson and the first Australian Touring Car Championship (known to day as the V8 Supercar Championship Series). Sandvik has now added its Orange High Productivity Centre – a huge repair and support centre to service mining operations in this region of the state. With a staff of 40, it features a state-of-the-art workshop able to rebuild equipment to as-new condition.
Straterra shocked by decision The declining of Trans-Tasman Resources’
“Compared to the surrounding area
UK warning on quarry lakes
marine consent application came as a
the footprint of the mining operation
Out of the 400 people who die from
shock to Straterra.
would be very small.
drowning in the UK every year a number
The newly set up Environmental
“Modern society needs these
of these deaths occur in disused quarries filled with water.
Protection Authority’s maiden decision
resources, as does the New Zealand
last month knocked back Trans-Tasman
economy, and it is difficult to imagine
Resource’s plans to mine ironsand
that the environmental impact of the
involved in rescuing members of the public
from the seabed off Taranaki, raising
proposed mining could not be managed
who have got into difficulty in quarries,”
misgivings in the resource sector about
in an acceptable manner.
says Dawn Whittaker, lead officer for
future offshore investment.
“I am sure the company could have
“I understand that the decision to
worked with conditions that required
decline hinged largely on there being
review over time. This decision sends
“Every year the emergency services are
water safety for the UK Chief Fire Officers Association. “Apart from water-related incidents,
too much uncertainty in relation to the
an unfortunate signal to potential
other typical rescues involve people who
environmental effects of the proposal
investors.”
have become stuck on or fallen over
and to Trans-Tasman Resources’
As a new government agency, the
quarry faces, young people being buried
proposals for addressing those effects,”
Environmental Protection Authority took
in sand while tunnelling or playing on
comments Straterra CEO Chris Baker.
over environmental regulation functions
stockpiles, individuals stuck and sinking
from the Ministry for the Environment,
into settling ponds and riders injured on
uncertainty, and the Exclusive
the Ministry of Economic Development,
trail bikes.”
Economic Zone and Continental
the Environmental Risk Management
“Everything we do in life carries
The association has been pleading with
Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act has
Authority and the Ministry of Foreign
the public not to ignore warning signs in
provisions to deal with uncertainty.
Affairs and Trade.
quarries. Last year, during a two-month
“One has to ask the question: has
It came into force in July 2011,
period of exceptionally warm weather, six
the process let us down and not
and was initially set up under the
people drowned while swimming in former
allowed adequate consideration of the
Resource Management (Simplifying and
quarry sites across the UK, and others
uncertainties and the conditions that
Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2009.
have drowned over the current European
would allow these uncertainties to be
In May 2011 it barely passed its final
summer.
dealt with?
reading in Parliament by 63 votes to
Water in a quarry can be extremely cold
59 with support from National, the
even after a period of prolonged warm
the seafloor more than 22 kilometres
Maori Party and United Future. The Act
weather, which can produce a reflex action
offshore at relatively shallow depths
Party withdrew its support after Treaty
where swimmers inhale water into their
where there is natural wave action on
of Waitangi provisions were added to
lungs. Other hazards include concealed
the seafloor in any event, and that
garner support from the Maori Party.
old machinery and high alkalinity in
“At issue is an ironsands resource on
supports very little life. 8 August - September 2014 Q&M
More comment on the decision page 10.
limestone quarries.
U P F R O N T
Volvo exhibits the art of scrap The award ceremony for Volvo Construction Equipment’s Up-Cycling Design Arts Campaign was held in Shanghai, marking the end of a six-month campaign that started in mainland China that was aimed at creating public awareness about the endless possibilities of recycling. The resulting works of art made from scrap machine parts were available online, and four pieces of work, from 20 finalists, were awarded with a grand prize. A further four pieces were awarded ‘Most Popular Work’ prizes, based on a tally of online votes. The grand winners were: Recycle and Protect for the poster category; Antler Mirror (pictured) for the accessory category; Shelf for the furnishing category; and Sea Horse for the installation art category. “We want to promote talent and creativity – our world needs it,” says Stina Nilimaa Wickstrom, design director of Volvo CE and a competition judge. “The amazing design and innovation demonstrated in this competition goes way beyond our original expectations. We are impressed by how these old machine parts were turned into amazing works of art.” More information: www.volvoarts.com.
Q&M August - September 2014 9
U P F R O N T
Last chance quarry guidelines WorkSafe NZ has, with the agreement of both the AQA and IoQ
Bathurst readies its Escarpment resource
boards, taken over the process for producing the new quarry
Bathurst Resources managing director, Hamish Bohannan,
guidelines.
is buoyant over the ‘enter and operate’ approval for its
“As WorkSafe has created an industry stakeholder group to deal with this process, there is little reason to continue with the Quarry Industry Working Group (QIWG),” says the AQA. The similarities between quarry operations and surface mining are such that the guidelines will become best industry practice for both quarry and surface mining sectors, the association told members last month.
Escarpment Mine Project from land owner the Department of Conservation. The company has already made its first payment as part of the $22 million compensation package to DOC as agreed under the access arrangement. “This initial construction phase is the important first step in developing a full scale export coking coal operation at
“MinEx will be heading the industry representation in future discussions with WorkSafe and will coordinate an industry response to the draft guidelines.” Meantime, copies of Health and Safety at Surface Mines,
Buller,” Bohannan says. “It’s also a positive development for the West Coast community.” Bathurst has started earthworks and site preparation
Alluvial Mines and Quarries, were circulated at the end of May to
at Escarpment in readiness to quickly move into full
AQA and IoQ members.
mining operations once global coking coal prices recover.
“This first draft is the starting point for our new guidelines,
These initial works involve site clearing, establishing initial
that will have impact on us all, and your thoughts, comments
water management dams and drainage systems, and the
and suggestions are crucial as we move through this
installation of coal stockpile areas, site roads and basic
development process,” said the AQA at the time in an effort to
infrastructure including a site office and amenities.
solicit comment towards an industry-wide submission that was
“Coal production areas will be cleared and other
to be sent to MinEx as the quarry industry section of a wider
earthworks will be undertaken to prepare the site to
submission.
transition to steady state operations when economic
“We need to hear your voice each step of the way to ensure the final guidelines are the best the industry can have. Silence indicates agreement and you need to make your comments early in the process or it will reach a ‘too late’ stage, when it will also be too late to complain...,” it pleaded at the time. Industry had until June 10 to make submissions to the AQA, or
conditions warrant full commercial production. Activities are scheduled to commence from 1 July 2014.” Coal recovered in the initial construction phase will be sold into the domestic industrial market, says the company. “It is envisaged that approximately 35,000 tonnes will be recovered in the first six months of site works. Some coal
June 27 to make an independent submission direct to Worksafe.
will also be dispatched for trials to coke and steel producers
The deadline for WorkSafe’s final approval is the end of October.
in Japan, India and other Asian markets.”
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10 August - September 2014 Q&M
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U P F R O N T
Smelter’s future still uncertain The situation at Tiwai Point smelter remains confused and the future of the 43-year-old plant at Tiwai and the 3200 jobs directly and indirectly dependent upon it, seem no further assured. Uncertainty over the future of the Tiwai Point smelter operation is unlikely to improve while the price of aluminium remains low and the Kiwi dollar remains high. Operating as New Zealand Aluminium Smelters, the smelter operation is 79 percent
New face at CablePrice
owned by Rio Tinto Alcan (NZ) with the balance of the shares held by Sumitomo
Alex Kelly, the new national sales
the company. At the time this was seen as saving the smelter from closure, providing
manager – equipment at CablePrice,
security for the southern economy, and stabilising the national electricity industry.
now heads Hitachi, John Deere
Chemical Company of Japan. Last year, NZ Aluminium Smelters struck an excellent deal with the then governmentowned Meridian Energy, whereby it paid pre-2013 prices for electricity supplied to
At the same time, and to reinforce its support for the smelter, the Government gave
and Bell equipment sales across
Rio Tinto Alcan a $30 million ‘sweetener’. While the power deal and this payment saved
the country.
800 jobs at Tiwai Point and delayed the closure of the plant, Rio Tinto indicated that
Based at CablePrice’s head office in Wellington, Alex is working within the sales and marketing team, and has spent
it would review the position in January 2017. The smelter is still faced with an aging plant, high power prices by world standards and a weak aluminium market. On June 25, Rio Tinto published its results for the 12 months ended December 31,
much of his career working in managerial
2013. This revealed an $18 million loss compared with a loss of $49 million in the
and sales roles with experience across
previous year.
a range of industries from wholesale,
According to NZ Aluminium Smelters chief executive, Gretta Stephens, the $18
distribution and manufacturing. “I am very
million loss was calculated after making adjustments of $85 million deducted from the
confident our sales team will meet the
statutory profit of $66.7 million.
challenges and growth opportunities in the industry,” he says.
These ‘non cash’ adjustments relate to the value of financial instruments linked with the company’s power contracts. BY PETER OWENS
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U P F R O N T
Changes to M4 aggregate specs
OceanaGold extends debt facilities
Quarries are set to become part of a new, national
OceanaGold Corporation has completed an agreement for a $200
rating system following a recently-completed NZTA
million corporate revolving credit facility to replace an existing credit
aggregate-testing programme.
set-up that is due to mature in June 2015.
Aimed at identifying aggregates that prevent ‘shear’ in a road pavement’s base layers, the programme will see the standard M4 specification modified in coming months, and means roading contractors may soon find themselves forced to source aggregate from a particular quarry to meet a road’s design specification, which could result in higher aggregate and transport costs. The testing programme was implemented following NZTA’s concerns about the incidence of shear in a number of pavements – particularly in high-grade pavements where shear wasn’t supposed to happen. “Much of our conventional road design is geared to maintaining the sub-grade – the soil right at the bottom of the pavement structure,” says John Donbavand, NZTA’s National Pavements manager. “In particular, we want to prevent ‘rutting’ in the subgrade – caused by the load from continuous traffic. If a structure is not well-designed the loading deforms the sub-grade. In turn, that deformation transfers upwards,
This new credit, which matures in June 2017, will be used to repay the existing term facility of $117.8 million and replaces the existing undrawn revolving credit facility of $50 million. It is financed by the company’s banking syndicate made up of; Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Citibank NA, HSBC, and Nedbank Capital PLC. OceanaGold’s managing director Mick Wilkes say the agreement, in addition to repaying debt and increasing the company’s cash position, provides for additional liquidity and flexibility which can be used, as necessary, for general corporate purposes. “The completion of this agreement demonstrates the confidence our banking syndicate has in our operational and financial performance to date and into the future.” After recent restructuring and new operations being planned for Macraes Mine in East Otago and at Reefton, OceanaGold has been careful in spending any cash. The recent restructuring saw the loss of about 150 jobs at Macraes and 60 on the West Coast. In line with Wilkes’ current thinking, which is endorsed by the company’s board, OceanaGold has been paying off larger amounts of capital debt. BY PETER OWENS.
creating uneven areas throughout the sub-base and base layers. These ultimately present as cracked, raised sections in the actual road surface, leading to the premature failure of the pavement. “Technically, rutting forces the aggregate to moves
Mataura plant finally sold
sideways [a ‘shove’]. We’ve always believed that roads
After months of negotiations and uncertainty, the $25 million
built with aggregates that meet our M4 specification
briquette plant operated at Mataura by beleaguered Solid Energy has
would be strong enough to withstand ‘shoving’ –
been sold to GTL Energy.
eliminating any chance of shear. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case. We know a number
GTL Energy is an Australian-based specialist in designing and manufacturing the technology for extracting briquettes from lignite
of pavements are suffering from shear, which suggests
and was a major force in the original design and construction of the
that while the M4 specification meets most of our
Mataura plant.
pavement requirements, it doesn’t cover all of them.” The NZTA investigation proved that in some high-load
Last year, when it appeared likely Solid Energy would be placed in receivership, GTL Energy, realising it would be ranked as an ordinary
cases, the M4 base layer aggregate is not always strong
creditor with such a move, acted quickly to secure its interests. It
enough to prevent shoving and shear.
signed a joint venture agreement with Solid Energy and together they
Different samples of M4 aggregates from quarries around the country were subjected to a battery of Repeated Load Triaxial Tests in a laboratory. Validating
formed the GTE Development Company in which Solid Energy held 20 percent of the shares. GTL Energy then took over the processing, marketing and
the test results was tackled at the NZTA’s Canterbury
development of the Mataura plant. However, even that did not save
Accelerator Pavement Testing Indoor Facility. The results,
the operation. On October 15, two years after construction, it was
he says, will lead to a modified M4 specification. The
closed.
testing programme has also pinpointed the quarries which offer the “best” aggregate for a revised M4 specification. The agency has begun discussions with quarry owners
Solid Energy retained its stake in GTLE Development and continued to own the Mataura plant until the recent sale. The new owner is reviewing the position before making any decision as to the future of the Mataura plant.
about the new specification, and hopes to introduce it
GTLE also has a commercial demonstration plant in North Dakota
within a few months. It will see the organisation being
and other lignite plant projects under various stages of development
more selective in terms of which quarries are used to
in Indonesia and Australia, and opportunities under review in the USA
source the aggregate.
and Europe. BY PETER OWENS.
12 August - September 2014 Q&M
U P F R O N T
Stockton mine hit hard Some 135 workers at Solid Energy’s Stockton’s mine lost their jobs when staff levels were reduced from 521 to 386 and coal production was reduced from 1.9 million tonnes a year to 1.4 Mt in the year to end-June 2015. The move, says the company, is in response to continuing low international coal prices and affected 33 management, technical,
Government endorses quarry industry
support services and
Minister of Resources Simon Bridges provided a rattling good speech to delegates at
people employed under the
QuarryNZ in Whangarei that endorsed both roading and aggregates throughout the country. “Unlike Labour and the Greens we don’t need convincing the country needs roads,” he said.
administrative staff and 102 collective agreement terms and conditions.
“Regional networks are critical to economic development.” More conference photos on page 20.
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Q&M August - September 2014 13
O N
T H E
C O V E R
Investing in Sandvik HUGH DE LACY talks to Road Metals about its decision to invest in a new
Sandvik QH331 hydrocone mobile crusher.
T
he Government’s promised regional roading spend-up had no influence on South Island company Road Metals’ decision to invest in a new Sandvik QH331 hydrocone mobile crusher but it helped sweeten the decision for managing director Murray Francis. Francis reckons the $212 million in extra regional roading investment is “great”, and “long overdue”, but the main reason he chose the Sandvik QH331, supplied by Porter Equipment, was because his staff had been impressed by the performance of an earlier model the company acquired overseas secondhand three years ago. That was a Fintec 1080, and while it’s still in service, Francis said it would eventually be replaced by the Sandvik. Fintec was a British company based near Belfast in Northern Ireland that the Swedish Sandvik group acquired along with another United Kingdom manufacturer, Extec Screens and Crushers of Birmingham, in 2007. “The older crusher is a Fintec but it’s the same cone as in the Sandvik,” Francis said. “We’ve been very happy with the performance of the Fintec – we 14 August - September 2014 Q&M
particularly like the cone on it.” Like the Fintec, the Sandvik QH331 is fitted with the CH430 conecrusher that comes with the choice of six different crushing chambers and a variety of bush settings that the manufacturer says makes it one of the most flexible crushers on the market today. The CH430 cone also comes with a hydroset CSS regulation system that keeps track of liner wear while optimising production. The Sandvik QH331 has a new direct drive system replacing the previous hydraulic drive, offering a more efficient use of power and a consequently enhanced operational capability and reduced fuel consumption. The improved efficiency and power transfer of the new direct drive allows for tighter close-side settings and larger bush variations for precision crushing. The QH331 is fitted with a camera that allows the operator full visibility of the crushing chamber, while the Bridge Coil up-and-over metal detector in the feed conveyor offers improved stability and controlled detection.
The QH331 is fitted with a camera that allows the operator full visibility of the crushing chamber, while the Bridge Coil up-and-over metal detector in the feed conveyor offers improved stability and controlled detection.
Maximum production, reduction and shape of aggregate is ensured by a level sensor above the crushing chamber that controls the automated variable-speed conveyor. The PLC control system is notably user-friendly, and servicing is facilitated by easy access to the engine compartment. Liners can be changed quickly and production resumed immediately because the QH331 requires no crusher backing material. The engine is of 261kW (350hp), the machine weighs 33.5 tonnes (73,855lbs) and has a maximum feed of 185mm (7.5in). New owner Road Metals is one of the South Island’s leading aggregate suppliers, having been started in North Otago in 1955 by Murray Francis’s father Stan, one of the industry’s pioneers who had started out after World War Two with an old one-ton Dodge he’d paid for by selling rabbit skins. Originally called North Otago Road Metals, the company dropped the “North Otago” when it launched into the Canterbury market in 1984, and it has produced road metals for markets as far away as Auckland. The company expanded rapidly with work on the Twizel and Clyde
dam power projects, and it has since also moved into ready-mix concrete supply with Kiwi Concrete. Chris Taose, Porter Equipment’s Canterbury/West Coast territory manager, says he hopes the sale of the Sandvik QH331 would be the start of a partnership with Road Metals for screening and crushing equipment, given that it’s the first major piece of equipment it’s sold to Road Metals in 10 years. “Road Metals have still been very good customers to the company with the purchase of parts and tyres through Porter Parts,” Taose told Q&M magazine. Road Metals’ knowledge of screening and crushing equipment meant it “knew running with the Sandvik product and the back-up of the Porter group they couldn’t go far wrong, so after doing their market research they pressed the button and decided to run with the Sandvik cone-crusher.” Sandvik is one of the icons of the Swedish precision engineering industry, founded in 1862 and headquartered in Stockholm, with about 47,000 employees world-wide. • Q&M August - September 2014 15
Q U A R R Y I N G
This entry from Higgins, Baldwin Quarry in the Waikato was a ‘voluntary’ initiative set out to improve the quality of water discharged from the quarry prior to its release into the Whangamarino Heritage Wetland.
GOLD FOR
WETLANDS PROJECT The Mimico Environmental Excellence Awards attracted four entries this year with a Gold going to Higgins, Baldwin Quarry in the Waikato. ALAN TITCHALL explains.
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Planting at Holcim, Bombay Quarry, Ridge Road, Pokeno.
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hese awards, presented each year at the combined AQA/IoQ conference in July, recognise contributions made by member companies and staff in caring for the environment. The scope of the award is very broad and includes any “action, process, activity or project that has a positive effect on the environment”, and it may be a one-off, or ongoing, and a project either large or small. This year entries were made by Higgins, Baldwin Quarry, Falls Road, Waikato; Holcim, Bombay Quarry, Ridge Road, Pokeno; Winstones, Pukekawa Quarry, Smeeds Quarry Road, Pukekawa; and Winstones, Hunua Quarry, Hunua Road, Papakura. Although in their sixth year, in 2013 the entry process was greatly simplified to attract more entries and now requires just a single page entry form with any relevant supporting material. Award judging involves a three-hour onsite visit. Multiple awards were also introduced last year; recognising excellence in three categories – one Gold and up to two Silver and Bronze.
The main judging criteria, also revised in 2013, involve: the degree of positive environmental impact; originality and innovation; degree of difficulty; and, whether the project was voluntary or mandatory. The judge, Dr Morgan Williams of FutureSteps, say all four entries this year illustrated excellent examples of proactive environmental management in their locations. “In addition all entrants were weaving their environmental management matters into the fabric of their business operation. “While the extent and significance of integration varied in all it was nevertheless a core component of good business and work practices along with health and safety, community and tangata whenua relations, energy efficiency and similar.” The presence of “passionate champions, with a focus on environmental (but not necessarily broader sustainability) matters was evident at all quarries” and was, as last year, a ‘stand out’ feature of the visits, he says. “However, an intriguing feature of two entries was that they had not included any financial data in their entry. During discussion it became clear that there were almost certainly tangible financial benefits being derived from the efforts to address an environmental matter, yet these had not been woven into their story of the initiative. “Failure to do this can be an indicator that overall quarry management is perhaps not as ‘linked up’ as it could be and that a more systems approach to operations would lead to financial viability and environmental sustainability being seen as part of an intertwined whole – not separate bits of the business.”
Gold for voluntary wetland initiative This entry from Higgins’ Baldwin Quarry in the Waikato was a ‘voluntary’ initiative set out to improve the quality of water discharged from the quarry prior to its release into the Whangamarino Heritage Wetland – one of only six Ramsar (internationally recognised) wetlands in the country. It proved a major investment shared between Baldwin Quarry, which spent $500,000 on the project, and the quarry’s neighbour, Peter Buckley and family, who donated several hectares of pasture and wetland land on their property for the project and spent another $100,000. “At the same time the design of the initiative created a secure
the quarry as it expanded – particularly during periods of heavy rain,” says Williams. “Thus Kerry Reilly conceived an innovative wetland proposal in partnership with his dairy farmer neighbour on whose property it was to be built. Collectively they used ecological principles to manage stormwater and other discharges from the quarry and the dairy farm.” The project is an excellent example of very good proactive business risk management, Williams adds. “Given the topography water discharges were always going to be highly variable, could not be contained on site, impacted on an immediate neighbour and would always end up in a Heritage wetland! High quality management was crucial. It’s of note that high quality onsite water management has been a feature of the quarry since inception – as evidenced by audits by the WRC.” Williams credits Kerry Reilly, the quarry owner, with being a “champion”. “He conceived the design, ‘sold’ the proposition to his neighbour – all outside any specific legislative directive from councils.” Working with his neighbour he got support from the Department of Conservation, Fish and Game, local district and regional councils, and even local Maori. “The wetland design was innovative,” Williams adds. “A combined effort between Kerry Reilly, Peter Buckley and a University of Waikato wetland professional. “Instead of digging into the low-lying terrain, they built the wetland by creating a connected series of ponds on top of the landscape thus minimising disturbance. “The design incorporated roadways on top of containment bunds, the creation of a central hill to help increase the length of working wetland and a viewing area, and extensive raised areas for revegetation. “Full provision for pubic access, from Falls Road to the site, and within the site is an important feature. The gravelled roads also provide ongoing access for machinery when any cleaning of ponds is needed. “However, given the generous size of the pond systems in the wetland this will be infrequently.” Over 15,000 trees and shrubs were planted with funding assistance ($35,000) from Waikato Ecological Enhancement Trust. “An excellent wild life habitat is emerging and there is a range
The main judging criteria involve: the degree of positive environmental impact; originality and innovation; degree of difficulty; and, whether the project was voluntary or mandatory. repository for a large volume of overburden from the quarry – a need that could not be readily met on a restricted quarry site,” notes Williams. The quarry is located in steep hill country on Falls Road, Meremere, some 10 kilometres from State Highway 1 and at the bottom of a large farmland and forestland catchment. The stream draining this catchment area passes through the main quarry area, under Falls Road and a short distance across a dairy farm to finally exit into the Wangamarino Heritage Wetland. “Clearly silt management was going to be a major challenge for
of species already in residence,” comments Williams. The design of the wetlands project has already attracted wider attention from other land users and public agencies. Dairy NZ used it to demonstrate, to a large contingent of local farm managers, overseas visitors and District and Regional Council representatives, the value of such systems and working in collaboration with other businesses and community. “This is a truly outstanding initiative that will be an ecological asset for the quarry, the Buckley farm, and the wider community, far into the future,” says Williams. Q&M Q&M August - September 2014 17
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Asphalt demand drives Mimico and subsidiary QMI Engineering won the contract to build a new $6 million chip processing plant at Isaac’s Quarry.
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imico is to supply Metso crushers, screens and accessories, while QMI Engineering is building the plant structures and will manage the installation. On-site work began this month (August) and is the second part of Isaac’s redevelopment at the quarry near Christchurch Airport. Part one, a $4 million plant producing concrete aggregate, was completed last year by the same suppliers. Isaac Construction industries manager Mike Higgins says the new plant will double chip production, and increase efficiency and flexibility to produce chip for general use and crusher dust for asphalt and concrete production. “In recent times, our old plant has struggled, and we have had to bring in chip and dust from other quarries to meet demand. The new plant will supply all our chip and dust in-house.” The new plant was designed and modelled by Mimico process engineer David McCaffrey, using Metso’s Bruno process simulation software. “The company is using the Metso GP100S in an open circuit, then sending the rock to the new Metso GP220 secondary cone as the main chip production machine.” In order to meet the predicted demand for asphalt, the GP100S was selected over a jaw crusher, as it will produce a finer feedstock at a higher production rate. After rock passes through the two cones, a new single drive Barmac B6150SE VSI polishes up the shape. The Barmac is fitted with a DTR open sided rotor which will produce quality cubical shaped chip at the lowest possible cost per tonne.
Mike Higgins: The new plant will double production.
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Says Mike Higgins; “The crusher setup means we can adjust the process to produce more dust and less chip when we need to.” Demand for crusher dust for asphalt production is unsustainably high, while demand for concrete sand and aggregate rises and falls, but is increasing slowly as the Canterbury earthquake rebuild gains momentum, he adds. The decision to award the first and second contract to Mimco/ QMI was not based solely on price, he says. “At each stage, getting the process right and then the layout and design right, took some time. I remember the Part 1 development started with layout ‘A’ and was up to ‘J’ before we were ready to build. “What Mimico and QMI did was work and rework their plans to make sure we had a very flexible plant that gave us options for future development. “This was not a project where a neat and compact design was going to be the best solution. We needed to know we could add things to the plant in the future, without significant changes to the original layout.” Two design changes were forced by new developments in the aggregates market during the planning process, says Higgins. “In one case, there was some talk about changing the M6 spec to the percentage of surface area of broken faces, and
chip plant design that presented a whole new set of challenges. We’d just get the design sorted and then external factors would force us to change it again.” Construction and commissioning of the new plant is expected to be complete by the end of June 2015. “In the future, we would also like to use one of the crushers out of our old chip plant to produce basecourse and another to crush our peas into dust, but that development is still some way off,” says Higgins. Q&M
“In recent times, our old plant has struggled, and we have had to bring in chip and dust from other quarries to meet demand.”
Q&M August - September 2014 19
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QuarryNZ 2014 in pictures
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1. N orthland branches of the IoQ and AQA laid it on for conference delegates at their joint conference in Whangarei called ‘Our Giants of the North’. 2. C onference organising chair Murray Smith and Sheryl Mai, the mayor of Whangarei, at the Gough Cat opening night dinner. It was noted that it was the first time a mayor had stayed through the entire evening function. 3. A rare shot of Alistair McIntyre (left- and aka Doug the Digger) in a suit; with Selywn Dodd from Winstone Aggregates, Northland. 4. B ill Burke, AQA planning and technical advisor, with the new (and second) edition of The Aggregates Handbook, which was first published in the US in 1999 by the National Sand Stone & Gravel Association in the USA, and is much sought after by quarry tech boffins here. You can order your copy through the AQA at a cost of $145 plus gst. The next shipment is due in October.
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4. Dicksons Quarry near Whangarei takes its on site security very seriously. This WW2 relic drew a lot of interest at the field trip to the quarry organised by CablePrice. 5. Bracing the morning winter chill outside the conference venue from CablePrice were (from left): Riki Corley, equipment product manager; Alex Kelly, new national sales manager equipment; and Paul Laird, account manager. 6. Tony Tomsett from Erosion Control standing alongside the company’s newly designed and manufactured flocculation system.
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7. At the Gough Cat dinner each table bid on a game with some $2500 collected as a donation to the mayoral Northland flood relief fund.
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10. Again, at Dicksons Quarry was this sophisticated remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS) piece of equipment for topographical surveying. It flew out over the quarry to film a rock-wall detonation by Prime Explosives. 11. CablePrice showed off some of its latest gear on site, including an impressive John Deere loader and this grunty Hitachi excavator. 12. Steve Marshall, regional sales manager Bridon Cookes with industry veteran Gavin Hartley. 13. Kevin Mowles, sales manager at Brevini New Zealand, one of many trade displays at the conference.
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14. A classic from the past – a 1973 Commer truck restored to pristine condition by the workshop at Dicksons Transport. 15. O n the Komatsu stand were Mike Gray (left), business development manager; and Garth Dixon, national sales and marketing manager. 16. Real Steel director Luke Mathieson (left) with Nick Webster from Lime Co, Havelock North. 17. They made them tough in Matamata. An original Paul Tidmarsh Barmac (1980s) at Dicksons Quarry that was rebuilt at the Mimico factory and installed on site a few years ago.
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18. Geoff Moore, Real Steel regional sales manager – Northern.
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19. Heavy concentration. Daniel Francis from Road Metals in Oamaru, having a go on the Trans Diesel simulator. 20. Tony Forster, chief inspector extractives WorkSafe, was put to work throughout the conference including presenting the IoQ Winstone Aggregate Safety Award, which went to Johnny Dickson from Dicksons Transport and Quarries. 21. At the Gough Cat dinner Mike Lord, chief executive of Envirofert, gets his copy of ‘Only Two Seats Left’ signed by the author and guest speaker, John Anderson, the founder of the original Contiki bus tours in the 1960s. 22. A packed lunch at Whangarei’s Toll Stadium hosted by the Porter Group.
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Equip2 makes rock processing easier. 23 23. Rocktec marketing and sales manager Jason Tapper (left) was presented with the Q&M magazine Editor’s Choice Award by Alan Titchall, editorial manager, Contrafed Publishing. 24. AQA technical advisor Bill Burke and AQA chair Andrea Cave on the quarry field trip, which was blessed by blue skies not that long after a disastrous storm hit the North.
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www.equip2.co.nz Q&M August - September 2014 25
M I N I N G
AN INTREPID HISTORY Quenching the fires that have been burning in the old Strongman mine is a hot job. HUGH DE LACY meets the firefighters.
Solid Energy mine manager Robert Watson (right) and Geotech project manager Dwayne Solly viewing steam venting from the XY South Pit.
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Riding with the operator on the digger is a heat-gun which, when pointed at the hot rock tells its temperature, while gas monitors are standard equipment on all machines.
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or the past 18 years fires in the old Strongman underground mines near Runanga on the West Coast have been defying attempts to extinguish them, but tunnelling and ground stabilisation specialist Geotech thinks it’s at last making headway. Strongman, which for much of last century was the country’s largest underground coalmine, was opened in the notorious Brunner seam in 1939, and closed after it exploded in 1967, killing 19 men. By then the Brunner seam had already killed 74 men – 65 in the 1896 Brunner disaster and nine more in the Dobson mine in 1926 – and would take the lives of 29
more in the Pike River mine explosions of 2010. All those mines were underground, but since the early 2000s Strongman has been gradually converted to an open pit operation, with Geotech contracted by owner Solid Energy to operate it under the state-owned collier’s technical and statutory guidance. The pit is one of five currently operational areas at Strongman, high in the Papamoa Range north-east of Greymouth, with about 12,000 tonnes of high-grade coking coal being mined annually and processed through the Rocky Creek washery at nearby Rapahoe, for export to the global
steelmaking industry. The slump in the global coal price has seen Solid Energy expand Geotech’s brief from coal production and site rehabilitation to include firefighting, all within the original mining contract’s requirement to shift 100,000 cubic metres of over-burden a month. For years Solid Energy had tried a range of methods to stifle the underground fires, which started by spontaneous combustion, using techniques like injected grout barriers to starve it of air, and removing the coal ahead of the advancing fires to deny it fuel. These techniques are still being used Q&M August - September 2014 27
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In this photo you can see the augering of a Strongman highwall to recover coal that would have previously been left behind. In some areas when conventional open-cut mining is completed, a large auger is used to drill under the existing highwalls to recover coal that would normally be left behind and sterilised by backfilling with waste from the next pit. The auger is 1.5 metres in diameter and can drill into a coalface up to 130 metres at a maximum dip of 10 degrees and can recover up to 300 tonnes in a normal day. The auger hole distance and pattern is specially designed to ensure the highwall above is kept intact and stable throughout the augering process.
where appropriate, but Geotech is targeting the fires more directly by digging tunnels to reach them, then saturating the hot areas with thousands of tonnes of water pumped up from the flooded shafts at the bottom of the old underground workings. The site is itself a challenge, being 600 metres above sea level, and the recipient of no less than six metres – yes, metres – of rain a year. The fires are sustained by oxygen seeping in through the fractured rock, and they vent into the open air through cracks and fissures near the surface, reaching temperatures of 1000°C in some places. Geotech’s targets are the fires in the Strongman Two underground mine, which was opened – and has since been closed – not far above the original portal about 20 years after the 1967 disaster. Employing 28 staff and a powerful phalanx of earthmoving equipment, Geotech’s strategy is to drive a series of pits down to the fires raging anything up to 70 metres below ground, operating within specified areas about 200m by 200m. The presence of the fires is clearly signalled to the digger operators not only by the rising smoke and steam but by the palpable heat. Riding with the operator on the digger is a heat-gun which, when pointed at the 28 August - September 2014 Q&M
hot rock tells its temperature, while gas monitors are standard equipment on all machines. “We don’t put any rock on the truck that’s over 70° – if it’s too hot we don’t work it until it’s cooled down,” Dwayne Solly, Geotech’s project manager for the Strongman job, told Q&M. Water is pumped from the lower levels of the mine 170m below the still-existing portals and well below the fires, and poured onto the hot rock at the rate of 250t an hour. “There’s plenty of water at the bottom of the mine – we’ll never run out,” says Solly, whose past experience has mostly been in the quarrying sector, and includes 15,000 hours on excavators and 6000 hours on bulldozers. As the fires are cooled, the area around them is mined, giving a return on the operation but, more importantly, denying the fires further fuel. Geotech’s first target fires were on what is known as the Nine-Mile ridge after the river and valley of the same name in which Strongman sits. That required the removal of 800,000m3 of overburden and took six months. The current efforts are aimed at the X-Y ridge where 1.7 million cubic metres is being shifted over a 15-month period. The line-up of equipment is impressive,
headed by a 65t Hitachi excavator backed up by a 75t Komatsu. Komatsu 155 and Caterpillar D11N bulldozers push the stuff around, and spoil and harvested coal alike are trucked away by a couple of old 50t Terex trucks, three Komatsu 605 rigid dumpers and three Komatsu HM400 trucks. The operation has substantial drilling capacity in the form of a Sandvik D50KS rig supported by various down-hole hammer rigs. As well as drilling and earthmoving, Geotech does all the blasting, with blast management flexibility and efficiency ensured by the on-site use of a technicallyadvanced emulsion plant, one of only two believed to be in the country. Geotech was founded in 2000 by Ant Black, a specialist in surface and underground mining technology with more than two decades’ experience in Australia and New Guinea as well as New Zealand. Black has been working on the West Coast since the late 1980s, and Geotech was his response to growing demands for technological expertise from the hydroelectric as well as the export coal sectors. The new company landed a contract on the Manapouri power scheme, doing rock stabilisation by shotcrete and bolting, and it was also giving advice on ventilation
Strongman facts and figures
While owned and managed by Solid Energy NZ, all operational work at Strongman is undertaken by the main contractor Geotech, a local company started by Ant Black in 2000.
and gas management in the great tunnel cut through the rock to the underground generators. The booming export coking coal trade drew the company to the West Coast, working mostly for Solid Energy, but also doing shaft recovery work for Oceana Gold and cliff stabilisation for the Department of Conservation. In the latter role they rescued ‘Rocky’, a 15-tonne boulder that had crashed into a Morgans Valley house in Christchurch during the March 2011 earthquake, and found a new home for it on the Mount Hutt ski area near Methven. Geotech was also called in to deal with another rock so notorious it had earned a nickname for itself, Scary Lucy, at Solid Energy’s Stockton mine Ridgeline Project. Scary Lucy was a 60 tonne sandstone behemoth that held up progress on the Ridgeline for two months at a cost of $70,000. Geotech stabilised the ground around the rock, which was eventually dealt with by being detonated inside a safety net. At Strongman, coal-winning and firefighting are going hand in hand with post-mining rehabilitation and remediation, further broadening the demands the old mine is making on its latest miners. Q&M
The original Strongman Mine was an underground coal mine located north of Greymouth on the West Coast, which operated from 1938 to 1994. In 1994 it was replaced by the Strongman Two underground mine further up Nine Mile valley, and which closed in 2003 but not before coal in a section of the mine caught fire due to spontaneous combustion not long after it opened. Around the same time, and in the same area as Strongman Two, an opencast mine was also being operated by contractors who stripped 5.9 million cubic metres of overburden to win one million tonnes of coal. Combined, the Strongman operations mined nine million tonnes of coal and employed over 1000 staff over their lifetimes. The current incarnation of the Strongman open-cut mine started in 2011 and is owned and operated by Solid Energy and the main contractor, Geotech. Initial plans were to produce 60,000 tonnes of good grade coal by opencasting and augering coal previously deemed either uneconomic or too difficult to mine. This operation has proved so successful in recent years that plans were made to increase production to 120,000 tonnes a year over the next five years in the Strongman two area. However, this involves mining through often geotechnically difficult country and also through areas still on fire from the old Strongman Two underground area. New areas to be mined are first drilled and monitoring equipment is lowered into the holes to identify spontaneous combustion trends below in the coal seams. Once the mining and fire mitigation areas are determined, very robust risk management processes are used to ensure the safety of all staff involved in these areas. After this has been determined, some underground workings around the proposed mining areas are injected with special grout barriers to control the fire areas by reducing their supply of oxygen. Up to 250 tonnes of water per hour is continuously pumped onto the heated areas to ensure the hot material is cooled to an acceptable level before work can start. This normally results in large plumes of steam venting off the heated rock material. This, along with current backfilling and rehabilitation of this area, helps control the remaining underground fires. Operational efforts are presently aimed at the ‘XY South’ mining target where 1.7 million cubic metres of overburden is being shifted over a 15-month period to uncover 240,000 tonnes of high-quality Strongman coal. Of the current production, 100,000 tonnes of coal is exported and about 20,000 tonnes sold domestically. This coal is very good quality, with low ash (3–5 percent) and sulphur (0.35 percent), but has to be won from steep and difficult terrain and requires specialist blasting techniques to loosen up the waste before digging. While owned and managed by Solid Energy NZ, all operational work is undertaken by the main contractor Geotech, a local company started by Ant Black in 2000. Geotech provides drill-blast, waste stripping, coal winning, roading and other ancillary work. Geotech currently has 28 staff who work 12-hour day shifts over a seven-day period on a ‘four days on, four days off’ roster. Geotech site project manager Dwayne Solly says this is a very popular roster as it gives the staff good lifestyle choices, especially with the four days off per roster. Solly has been at the mine since it started two and a half years ago and has a broad range of experience from quarrying dolomite and marble in Golden Bay to contracting, and now to running the Geotech contract in a technically and operationally challenging environment at Strongman. Cartage contractors are a local company, GC Smith, owned and operated by Graeme Smith. GC Smith has a long and successful history associated with Strongman including mining and roading, in addition to coal cartage. Over the past 20 years, the company has carted over four million tonnes of coal from the Strongman mines and currently has up to six staff involved carting coal and maintaining the six kilometres of mine roads. The coal is transported to Solid Energy’s Rocky Creek processing plant where it is cleaned, screened and blended to suit the requirements of different customers before it is distributed to rail for export and various domestic customers.
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PERSEVERANCE WINS THE GOLD
At a time when goldmines the world over are shutting up shop, a new one is starting up in New Zealand. HUGH DE LACY goes in search of bullion.
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he slump in the gold price a couple of years ago should have killed off efforts to re-open the historic Talisman mine near Waihi in the Bay of Plenty, but in the teeth of all the obstacles and naysayers it’ll be in production by Christmas this year and should be in surplus 18 months later. Part of that golden mound, Mount Karangahake, whose quartz veins have yielded millions of ounces of gold in the vicinity of the river of the same name, the re-opening of the Talisman is the achievement of New Talisman Gold Mines and its predecessor, Heritage Gold. New Talisman is listed on both sides of the Tasman, and the final endorsement of shareholders for the strategy came with a recent successful rights issue, combined with a funding agreement from an as-yet-unnamed Australian financier. The mining will be on a small scale, beginning with half a dozen staff producing about 400 tonnes of ore a month with an expected yield across the whole of the project of 10-to-12 grams per tonne, plus about four times that amount of silver. After 18 months the total capital invested by New Talisman will 30 August - September 2014 Q&M
be $1.7 million, but by then the mine would have yielded a surplus of $1.3 million. The overall strategy is to start small and expand with cashflow. Between Heritage and New Talisman, the total amount of capital spent on getting the Talisman working again will have been in the region of $15 million. New Talisman chief executive Matt Hill says the exact amount of capital spent so far is; “hard to break out, but just over the last two years we’ve probably spent $3 million on developing our pre-feasibility study, and preparing and upgrading the road and all the work that’s been required to get it to the state it’s in today.” In appearance that state isn’t much different from what it’s been since the 1930s: the mine entrance is just a two metre by two metre tunnel going more or less straight and level into the side of the mountain, and the new round of mining won’t initially change it much. Mining will be carried out by a Terex compact track loader (PT-30), small enough to spin on its axis inside the mine, which will cart the ore to a truck near the portal.
Opposite page: Mining will be carried out by a Terex digger, small enough to spin on its axis inside the mine, which will cart the ore to a truck near the portal. Above left: At the portal from left: Wayne Chowles, principal mining engineer; Ian Pringle, company director; and Matt Hill; chief executive. Left: Level eight of the old Talisman mine. Production peaked in 1914 at 52,000 tonnes of ore mined, but after producing 3.5 million ounces of bullion in 26 years, it closed in 1920 for want of further areas of payable ore.
Negotiations are still under way with both of the country’s big goldmining companies over who will process it. Just up the road from New Talisman is the Martha Pit at Waihi where global giant Newmont is operating and has a large processing facility, but down in West Otago there’s mid-sized company Oceana Gold Corporation with its autoclave. “We are not at a stage at this point to be confident [which processor it will be],” Hill told Q&M. “What we can say is that testing has been done on our ore and continues with those parties.” Hill said preliminary testing had not revealed any “nasties” in the ore, and a deal will be inked with one or other company within three months. Nor can Hill yet reveal the name of the Australian financier that’s funding the company over the mountainous hump from exploration to production, but it’s not the Chinese interests that were still seeking to become involved a few months ago. The Chinese wanted to operate the mine rather than just invest in it, but Hill said that brought a strong reaction from shareholders
who thought the company was in danger of ‘selling the farm’ if it turned the project over to the Chinese. So, with the shareholders indicating they were prepared to put up more money through a rights issue, it was not too difficult to find finance for production. An indication of the nature of the funding agreement is that a letter of offer has been signed relating to a converting rate facility. “It’s simply a non-bank financing deal, a case of money being provided on a convertible basis, with our options being to repay it in full, repay it in part and convert the balance to shares, or continue to roll over the facility,” Hill says. “In our view our job as directors and the board is to extract value for shareholders, not necessarily a finance company.” The Talisman mine has a long history. Its first ore was mined in 1894 near the top of Mount Karangahake on the original 18-hectare Talisman claim by a locally funded company, and processed at the neighbouring Crown Mines battery. By 1905, however, a series of acquisitions saw the tenement extended to 302 hectares with the addition of the Woodstock, Q&M August - September 2014 31
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In appearance the current state of the mine isn’t much different from what it’s been since the 1930s: the mine entrance is just a two metre by two metre tunnel going more or less straight and level into the side of the mountain, and the new round of mining won’t initially change it much.
Ivanhoe and Kenilworth mines, among others – mostly named after novels by Sir Walter Scott. Production peaked in 1914 at 52,000 tonnes of ore mined, but after producing 3.5 million ounces of bullion in 26 years, it closed in 1920 for want of further areas of payable ore. It re-opened in 1930 under the auspices of the Talisman Dubbo Gold Mining Company in an area previously held, but not worked by Crown Mines, and continued profitably for eight years. By that stage virtually all the ore won during the previous 34 years of operation had come from shoots worked from 16 levels, plus several intermediate levels, over a total vertical interval of 580 metres. In 1971 the Southern Cross Minerals company, later called Southern Gold, began a re-appraisal of Talisman’s potential that resulted in the formation of a joint venture operating company called New Zealand Goldfields, supported by British capital, and limited amounts of ore were produced until 1983. Goldfields entered a joint venture with Freeport Australia Minerals in the mid-1980s which carried out an intensive programme of sampling and testing, later supplemented by further work by Southern Gold, but in 1993 the latter’s licence lapsed. It was quickly taken up by another local explorer, Heritage Gold, which carried out a review of all historical data, and added an aeromagnetic survey to it. Heritage then launched a new two-phase exploration programme in 2003, the first of which culminated in the declaration of a 109,600 ounce gold resource. 32 June - July 2014 Q&M
The second phase, completed in 2005, identified a JORCcompliant resources of 205,000oz, prompting the launch of a third phase aimed at increasing the resource to at least 500,000oz, but funding could not be found for it. The result was that Heritage was restructured in 2012 as New Talisman Gold Mines with a specific focus on the smallscale development of the old Talisman mine, beginning with a pre-feasibility study, and from that has followed the imminent start to actual mining. The financials of the New Talisman venture are based on a global gold price of US$1200/oz, against which the current level of US$1300/oz looks positive, even in the wake of the recent slump from nearly US$2000/oz to around US$1300 today. And Hill sees plenty of upside in the price. “It’s in a depressed and quite volatile state, but it’s started to show it’s coming back as a safe haven. “There is a base to gold predicated on supply and demand and we’ve got a view that in 18 months, when we complete our bulk sampling, gold will be in a very different state than it is today. “We’ve seen a lot of supply turn off even though gold is required in many industrial processes, retail buyers like those in India are finding it not so readily available, and reserve banks are starting to invest heavily in gold,” Hill said. So, counter-cyclical as the re-opening of an historic gold mine might seem from the current perspective, Hill and New Talisman may well be starting production, however modestly, at the right time. Q&M
PHOTO: RIVERTON HERITAGE SOCIETY
Beach mining – take yer togs Today, all that remains of the once flourishing mining settlement of Orepuki is a tavern and a café. It was not always so. PETER OWENS explains.
I
n 1863, gold was found in the black sand of the beach near Orepuki and within a very short time over 70 men were working the beach for a distance of 13 kilometres. My own ancestors were among them and once the peculiar techniques required for beach mining had been mastered, they and their families flourished at this unusual type of mining, well into the 20th century. What spiked my interest was meeting two old miners at Gillespie’s Beach in South Westland, who had learned the beach mining techniques at Orepuki and, until quite recently, were making a very respectable income. The gold is deposited onto the beaches by silt swept down the swift western and southern rivers. It is also thought to have come from the erosion of soft stone on sea cliffs. However, the gold does not just lie on top of the sand for the taking. Many miners in the 19th and 20th centuries used cradles for river mining, but these proved to be unsuitable for beach mining, so the miners developed their own unique method of
Early beach mining near Orepuki.
claiming the gold. First they pegged out their claims on the beach as you normally did, then they stripped off the sand and the shingle to access the sandstone beneath. The wash dirt was then fed through sluice boxes which had wool or a similar fabric attached to the bottom. They then set about retrieving the gold from the black sand. The extensive sluicing in the area, not only on the beach but in the foreshore gullies, has left an indelible imprint on the land. While commercial beach mining has long stopped, people in Southland and in South Westland still work at it when unusual tides expose black sand that is normally inaccessible, or when ocean storms dump large deposits of black sand on the beaches. Before meeting the two old prospectors I was very sceptical about there being any more gold to be retrieved from beach mining. My scepticism turned to instant respect when I was shown by an old miner an old quart milk bottle filled to the top with fine, bright beach gold. Not a bad retirement income source! Q&M
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Q&M August - September 2014 33
T E C H N O L O G Y
Offshore mining opportunity The extraction industry was absolutely shocked by the Environmental Protection Authority’s rejection of Trans-Tasman Resources’ proposed ironsand-mining project in offshore South Taranaki. That decision is now heading to the courts. BY LINDSAY CLARK.
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rans-Tasman was to be a pioneer in expanding our iron ore exports by developing a method of mining by ship the black offshore titanomagnetite sands that occur along much of the North Island west coast. Though Trans-Tasman was granted the first offshore mining permit for ironsand in May from NZ Petroleum & Minerals, a month later in June the relatively new Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) turned down the environmental marine consent needed for ocean projects beyond 12 nautical miles in the exclusive economic zone or EEZ. Why did things go so against Trans-Tasman? On the face of it, this project was just the extension into the shallow offshore of ironsand mining which has quietly been going on onshore for about 50 years without causing any obvious environmental problems. What can be so different about mining offshore, apart from the technical difficulties of mining with ships in a rough sea? The answer is the environment at sea is actually a lot different and the mining company found the environmental hearings rough going too. Trans-Tasman was unlucky to be the first project to be considered for a marine consent under the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act 2012, or EEZ Act, which came into force on 28 June 2013. The EPA, set up three years ago by the current Government as the arms-length regulator on environmental issues, is the designated body to approve or reject mining consents under the EEZ Act. The EPA, which now also hears nationally significant projects under the Resource Management Act, appointed a five person ‘decision making committee’ (DMC) to hear and independently make a decision on the TTR application. And once this committee makes a decision, any appeals can only be based on points of law. Trans-Tasman is making such an appeal, which is no surprise after spending some $60 million on putting together the groundbreaking and complex environmental impact assessments, mine planning, and community engagement to support the project. Another $8
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million was spent on preparation for the EPA hearings. The opposition against the project was overwhelming. There were only 11 submissions supporting the proposal, and 4680 submissions opposing it. The DMC panel made its final decision after two months of hearings, declaring that there were too many environmental uncertainties, and even questioning the economic viability of the scheme, though it finally conceded that the project was likely to have a positive net economic benefit to the country. “We think this application was premature,” said the committee, suggesting the applicant should have spent more time on addressing the operation’s impact on the environment, and “engaged more constructively with existing interests and other parties”. Trans-Tasman Resources management must have found these judgments hard to swallow in view of the time and money it had put into the application. The National Government would also likely have been displeased as it has long complained that the Resource Management Act – the onshore forerunner of the EEZ Act – should not involve itself in economic factors, only environmental factors. When the then Minister for the Environment Dr Nick Smith introduced the EPA legislation to Parliament in November 2010 he said; “It is about a balanced approach of growing the economy, but underpinned by sound environmental systems.” During the hearing a number of environmental issues were raised, such as blue whales and Maui dolphins, and the impact on fishing and diving. Lying at the heart of most of these issues was the size and density of the fine sediment plume from the seabed mining that could potentially lay a thin carpet of mud in the seabed offshore over a large area in the South Taranaki Bight, from Taranaki to Wanganui and Manawatu. TTR had plans to mine annually up to 40-50 million tonnes of sediment with a crawler on the seabed sucking it up through a large pipe to a moored FPSO vessel, where onboard concentration would separate out over two million tonnes of ironsand concentrate each
“This meant that TTR’s mining ships would have mined to within just over one kilometre from the Kupe production platform, which made Kupe operator Origin Energy very nervous.”
goes to court year for export to Asian steel-making markets. A key focus of the EPA hearing was what would happen to the remaining 90 percent of non-ironsand ‘waste’ sediment placed in the mined hole behind the ship. The DMC said in its summary that modelling by science experts showed the finest sediments from mud amid the ironsand would be carried away by currents and could create a sediment plume with a median extent of about 50 kilometres long and up to 20 kilometres wide – and drifting mostly east south-east from the mining site. (To compare this with an onshore mine, it would be like creating a semi-permanent dust cloud of similar dimensions downwind of the mine.) The committee said many wider environmental effects outside the immediate mined area would result from the plume. Reduced light from the plume cloud could reduce primary productivity of the ocean and seabed including algae and zooplankton. The spread of the plume could reduce total primary production in the wider South Taranaki Bight by the order of 10 percent, and reduce energy input into the seabed ecosystem by up
to 36 percent. This in turn was likely to have an impact on other marine life and on fishing harvests. Whether the plume size would actually be as big as predicted could only be determined by more intensive future drilling of the mine target area by TTR. Although it received no media coverage, there was industry opposition to the fact that TTR’s mining permit is located right across the middle of the Kupe gas-condensate field. This meant that TTR’s mining ships would have mined to within just over one kilometre from the Kupe production platform, which made Kupe operator Origin Energy very nervous. The two extraction companies had still not managed to reach an amicable agreement on terms before the EPA’s final decision was announced. That conflict only added more uncertainty for the committee. The future of offshore ironsand mining now lies with the courts and it was probably inevitable that the new EEZ regime would be tested by the judicial system. If the court rulings go against TTR again it could mean the premature end of offshore iron ore as an export industry. Q&M
Q&M August - September 2014 35
W H E E L S
I N
T H E
W O R K P L A C E
BATTLE
ROYAL Three decades ago the Hilux changed the way Kiwis thought about the good old work ute. Now in the face of stiff competition from rivals, Toyota has upped the ante with higher specifications, more safety and a brand new engine option for the 2014 range.
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s a rule of thumb, you could quite effectively chart the changing fortunes of the humble light commercial ute in this country by using Toyota’s long-running Hilux as an example. Back in the early 1980s, with the help of the first of many memorable marketing campaigns the company would use to good effect, the Hilux successfully ‘crossed over’ becoming a household brand name. Thanks to the mud-splattered antics of Crumpy (Barry Crump) and Scotty (Lloyd Scott) in the popular television commercial series, the Hilux went in many minds from basic farm implement to ... well, not quite the status symbol many utes have become today, but certainly the first incremental step in that change process. Thirty-two years later and Hilux is still at the top of the pile. How? Well, there are four reasons really. First, Toyota is not shy about offering shrewd fleet deals for a chocolate box of businesses within the construction and primary industry sectors; the model’s base grades ably fit the bill for many SMEs and large entities requiring 2WD and 4WD Hiluxs alike to shift staff and supplies. We also have the increasingly lifestyle-orientated ute market, where a 4WD Double Cab ute is seen as a weekday workhorse and a weekend boat-tower that’ll carry the entire family. Whereas status was something you only attached to a four-door Euro sedan a decade ago, these days a ute with all the fruit says as much about your bank balance as an Audi sporting a ski rack. There’s also the Hilux’s incredibly strong resale values, which continue to trend above much of the competition. Taking a look at auction websites and Toyota’s own pre-owned Signature Class offering and there clearly remains a ready market for used Hiluxs, regardless of body style or kilometres travelled. And perhaps feeding on from that, you simply can’t underestimate the Hilux’s built-in reputation for bulletproof
36 August - September 2014 Q&M
reliability. If you’ve never seen fluff-headed, loudmouth Jeremy Clarkson attempt to ‘kill’ a Hilux on one of the Top Gear TV show’s most memorable episodes, we’d suggest heading to YouTube to see what we mean. So yes; it’s a phenomenal run whichever way you slice it. In recent times though, Toyota’s truck has faced some stiff competition both in terms of quality and specification from Ford, with its increasingly-popular all-things-to-all-people Ranger offering, and in terms of cut price bang-for-buck from the likes of Great Wall and SsangYong, whose V-Series and Actyon models respectively have been taking the broadsword to Toyota in terms of retail pricing. So while the ute market overall has expanded, the fight has gotten a lot fiercer as a result. With a new ground-up Hilux still over a year away, Toyota has upped the ante for 2014 with a face-lifted range, improved safety measures and specification features, and what will be a tempting run – for Hilux fans at least – of special and limited edition models to be released throughout the year, beginning in recent weeks with the launch of the 2WD EDGE edition and to be followed by the strongly rumoured 4WD TRD (Toyota Racing Development) truck, which promises much. In fact the Hilux you see on these pages is entirely new as well. Well, okay... the engine is anyway. While the remainder of Toyota’s 12 Hilux models are powered by the 126kW/343Nm 3.0-litre turbo diesel we’ve seen in-situ for the last few years, a new 4.0-litre V6 petrol is now available in 2WD and 4WD Double Cab SR5 versions. In fact the petrolpowered 2WD Hilux is now the only SR5 available in the tarmacfriendly model stream (the go-anywhere 4WD Hilux SR5 can still be bought as both petrol and diesel). In case you don’t know your Hilux from your High Low Range, SR5 denotes the top trim level for Toyota’s truck and arrives out of the box with the sort of standard jewellery you’d expect;
Thanks to the mud-splattered antics of Barry Crump and Scotty in the early and very popular television commercial series, the Hilux went in many minds from basic farm implement to a household name.
Wear parts that wear less.
Toyota Hilux SR5 4WD Double Cab Engine: 4.0-litre V6 petrol Transmission: Five-speed automatic Power: 175kW Torque: 376Nm Fuel economy: 11.8L/100km Tow rating: 2800kg (braked) 0-100km/h: N/A Max speed: N/A Price: $65,290
a revised audio system, a tailgate-mounted reversing camera and Bluetooth hands-free phone capability and voice control software, which allows you to use the phone and audio systems almost without lifting a finger. Also now standard across the SR5 range for 2014 is satellite navigation, which also incorporates SUNA ‘real time’ traffic updates designed to give you the best possible route in traffic. Beyond the SR5 models, every Hilux in the range also now has cruise control as standard, as well as steering wheel controls for Multi-Information Display (MID) trip data displayed in the instrument cluster and the audio and phone systems; items that were previously lacking from cheaper models. Glossy brochure stuff aside, the real headline for the new V6 petrol though is its available power; 175kW (or 235hp in the old money) at a peak of 5200rpm, which is the highest output of any ute in the local market at present. There’s 376Nm of torque as well, which will prove handy for hauling that mini excavator during the week and the son’s motocross bikes at the weekend. The other feather in Toyota’s Hilux cap is the newly awarded 5 Star ANCAP safety rating for double cab versions, thanks mainly to the inclusion of three-point ELR seatbelts across all three seating positions in the rear (previously only a lap belt was available in the centre position). For all 4WD Hilux variants, Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) and Active Traction Control (A-TRC) are now also standard. So while the last 12 months have seen something of a beaut ute battleground develop within the light truck segment, the Hilux still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve (along with that all-important solid reputation) to take the fight back to the competition. Q&M
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Q&M August - September 2014 37
C O M M E N T
Quarries should brace for change Andy Loader from First Rock Consultancy discusses aspects of the draft quarry guidelines that he believes will mean significant changes for most operators.
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here are a lot of areas in the current proposed guidelines for quarries that I believe are actually overdue in relation to maintaining a high level of safety for our industry, but there are a few areas where they will be possibly seen as (for want of a better term) scary. The first of these is in the ‘definition of a quarry’ which includes: ‘Tips (even if they are outside the site boundary); and areas used for crushing or screening extracted or processed materials regardless of whether it is at the place the material was extracted’. These two areas set out responsibilities in black and white that have previously been considered to be a bit of a grey area. The problem that I see with the tip part is that there is no definition as to how far outside the site boundary does it have to be before it ceases to be a part of the quarry. If you are giving stripping away to get rid of it, do you still retain responsibility for where and how it is placed under this part, as it could be seen to be a stripping dump that is outside the site boundary? The second part identifies all areas used for crushing and screening as a quarry. This means that all crushing and screening plants become quarries in their own right. This will have major implications for those operators/contractors who operate mobile crushing and screening plants and currently do not employ persons holding a “current certificate of competency” to manage those operations.
Edge protection The height of edge protection is proposed at 1.5 metres or the radius of the largest wheel or tyre – whichever is greater. “However in some cases the edge protection may need to be higher to stop a vehicle going over an edge. For an eighty five tonne vehicle or less tests have shown that you need a berm of three times axle height. For vehicles of greater capacity than 85 tonnes a height of four times axle height would be required. When designing roads a higher edge protection should be considered for areas where the vehicles are more likely to run through edge protection.” Previously it has been up to each individual operation to set its own standard for edge protection and many will not have reached this minimum of 1.5m.
Loading operations “Loose bulk loads being transported in a vehicle on a public road without a tarpaulin fitted should at no time reach higher than 100mm below any side of the vehicle. “When travelling on a public road, loose bulk loads should be tarped, netted or sheeted as appropriate whenever there is a risk of load shedding due to wind action or movement. Body work should be kept in good condition in order to minimise the hazards during transportation. This applies particularly to badly fitted tail gates that permit gravel and stones to fall to the roadway. “If the load is to be sheeted, an on-vehicle sheeting device that can be worked from ground level or a safe place higher up 38 August - September 2014 Q&M
Andy Loader
should be provided, or a sheeting platform or gantry should be available on site.” This section appears to be placing the responsibility onto the quarry operator for all vehicles leaving the quarry, particularly in the areas highlighted above. Given that the guidelines may be used as a description of “best working practices” in any prosecution – does this section mean that the quarry operator is responsible for all vehicles leaving their quarry in regard to loading and sheeting of loads? There is also a requirement to provide a sheeting platform or gantry for use where the vehicles are not fitted with sheeting devices that can be operated from the ground.
Load weight “The vehicle should be able to take the full weight of everything it is asked to carry. No vehicle should ever be loaded beyond its ‘rated capacity’ (the original vehicle manufacturer should provide this information) or its legal limit of gross weight if it is to be used on public roads.” This section seems to put the responsibility onto the quarry operator for the loading/overloading of all vehicles being loaded in the quarry, and as part of that responsibility they are required to know or find out what the rated capacity is for any given make and model of vehicle to be loaded. Given that the guidelines may be used as a description of “best working practices” in any prosecution does this section mean that the quarry operator is responsible for all vehicles leaving his quarry, in regard to loading and load weights?
Training and competency of drivers “In general, newly recruited drivers have the greatest training needs but there should also be a programme of reassessment for more experienced drivers (e.g. every two years). “Keep a training record for each driver to help ensure the most appropriate person is allocated a particular task and identify those requiring refresher training.” This places an onus on the quarry operator to put in place a programme for re-assessment of all drivers on a regular basis with an example quoting two yearly re-assessment.
Face heights and bench widths These sections of the guidelines set out the maximum face heights and bench widths with these being a return to what was required under the Quarries Regulations 1983, ie, 15 metres in competent ground, 3.5m in unconsolidated ground and the benches to be at least half the height of the face above with the proviso that they must be wide enough for the safe operation of vehicles given the level of activity.
Guarding This section on guarding sets out the guidelines for guarding and the most important part of this is for the industry to realise that all guarding and risk assessment should be done in accordance with the AS 4024 series. Q&M
I N N O V A T I O N S
CDE electric screen
Introducing the Quarryman Pro The new Renishaw Quarryman Pro uses innovative technology to optimise blasting and contribute significantly to the profitability of quarrying operations. Quarryman has been used in quarries for over 20 years and the ‘Pro’ model has been optimised for speed of operation in tough environments, with swift set-up, programming, scanning and data processing, and offers significant benefits over previous models. For instance the new ‘sun-readable’ screen is larger than on previous models and is now in full colour. Data is saved to a USB, rather than a flashcard, for ease of data transfer and a GPS mount is built into the handle, so operators can quickly position Quarryman Pro and easily map point cloud data to other quarry maps, using coordinates. The new Li-ion battery is not only lighter, but provides a greater scan time.
CDE Global’s new R2500 dry screening plant is a static primary screening unit capable of processing over 500 tonnes per hour in quarrying, recycling and mining operations. It seamlessly integrates into an existing or new washing system and is electric, meaning savings in fuel costs and a quieter operation. The R2500 was designed at the new CDE Innovation Centre at the company’s headquarters in Northern Ireland. Features of the R2500 include a patent-pending laminate side-wall design on the ProGrade P2-75/R screen that has zero welds which results in a stronger, lighter screen which requires less power and is galvanised as standard. The lattice design screen has a reduced mass and ensures more energy is transferred to the material for superior screening performance.
Windscreen treatment The new Rain-X Original Glass Treatment can make a dramatic difference to driving visibility. It’s simple to apply and can be used on any type of glass and works by sealing the microscopic pores of glass with a super-slick invisible barrier that repels rain, sleet, and snow on contact. Rain drops bead up and are blown away by the aerodynamic wind flow from driving, improving all-weather visibility, safety and driving comfort. The product is supplied by Griffiths Equipment. For further information, contact national sales manager Tim Paterson, 09 525 4575 or 027 473 1203.
Improved bucket shrouds Sandvik has released a new mechanical heel shroud system for loader buckets in hard rock mining applications. Described as a new concept in mechanical wear parts, Sandvik Shark’s Mechanical Heel Shroud (MHS) is significantly quicker and safer to change out, resulting in reduced downtime and fewer bucket repairs. Installing the MHS onto a loader bucket – and it is adaptable to any brand – requires the one-off fitment of a special base plate, which is designed to last the life of the bucket. The shrouds are attached to the base plate using Sandvik’s ‘one bolt system’ with standard fitters’ tools and with no welding required. Once installed, wear levels can be visually monitored. These new shrouds are available in two versions – a standard and an XL version with an additional 40mm of wear material forward of the locking bolt to better handle increased impact and abrasion from side-wall collisions in underground work. Q&M August - September 2014 39
I N N O V A T I O N S
Dust suppression
New UAS system
A global specialist in open-area dust suppression has a new family of adjustable mounting brackets for the popular DustBoss DB-R series of dust suppressors. The new bracket design is available to suit the entire range of ring sizes from 17 to 100 inches, and can be installed in about an hour. “Because of the wide variation in conveyor designs, in the past we’ve left the mounting of the rings to the individual customer,” says Dust Control Technology chief Edwin Peterson. “But it was clear that customers looked to us for guidance. So now we’ve designed an adjustable bracket that can fit virtually any conveyor design, with movable arms to allow precise location of the atomized mist circle to match the specific conveyor, material and outflow.”
Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are drastically reducing aerial mapping project time and MAVinci’s latest offering to the UAS market, the Sirius Pro UAV, offers the same 5cm accuracy as a Sirius Classic without the need for ground control points (GCPs). Traditionally GCPs have been required for UAS modelling applications. “Setting out ground control can often take more than 50 percent of the total project time for an aerial survey,” says Gavin Docherty, UAS product manager for MAVinci’s Australasian distributor, Position Partners. “By removing this step in the process, the Sirius Pro delivers the same accuracy and reliability of data with ultimate convenience for the user.” The Sirius Pro features Topcon Positioning System’s GNSS technology, with an on-board Topcon 100Hz dual frequency geodetic GNSS receiver to deliver real time kinematic accuracy. This technology could prove a game changer for any surveyor wanting to undertake large-scale mapping and topographical surveys and is especially useful for mining applications. More information www.positionpartners.co.nz, ph 03 366 1726.
Stopping slipping and sliding It’s no fun trying to control a haul truck with a mind of its own no matter how good the tread design and the reason why Erlau traction chains are also used in mines and quarries around the world. The company’s FELS Imperial chains are protecting tyres at a Holcim limestone quarry in the South Island. Not only do protection chains supply more grip in harsh conditions, they also prevent abrasion and sidewall damage, and extend the life of tyres that can cost as much as US$40,000 each. They also improve machine availability and dramatically reduce the cost per loaded tonne. Developed by Erlau AG, Terra Plus is a lightweight, open-meshed terrier-toothed chain which can be quickly installed and removed as site conditions demand. Sets of Terra Plus chains come supplied with Easy R-Lock and Easy-Link Connectors that enable the ends of the chain ‘mats’ to be quickly spliced or disconnected with a simple turn of a hex key.
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