Bateman Engineering’s modular plant business has seen a considerable upswing in orders over the past few months, with a number of contracts, including repeat orders, from as far afield as Russia and Iran. These plants can be applied in prospecting, exploration, small-scale mining and mineral processing. The design options are standardised, but flexible, and significantly reduce engineering and construction times and hence capital cost.

In the third order to be received from Iran, Calcimin, the largest zinc and lead producer in the Middle East, has placed an order for a 50 t/h dense-media separation (DMS) plant.  The order was placed following test work on a sample by Bateman Engineering confirming the suitability of this technology for the client’s requirements.

The contract, which was received at the end of September 2010, requires a Bateman 50 t/h plant to be suitably modified to recover lead and zinc, initially from a tailings dump. The plant is due for completion in January 2011, having been manufactured, fully assembled and water tested in South Africa and then dismantled for packing into six 12 m containers for shipping to the port of Badar Abbas in Iran.

This order is the third to be received from Iran and follows shortly after the successful commissioning of a 30 t/h DMS modular plant for the Asechin Ara Company in Iran. This plant is used for the pre-concentration of zinc and lead carbonate bearing ore from the Angouran Mine in Iran’s Zanjan Province, and will also be used to process other base metals and also industrial minerals from various mine sites in Iran.

The first DMS plant to be supplied to Iran was a 5 t/h plant supplied to the Iranian Minerals Processing Research Centre (IMPRC) in 2004.

In a repeat order, Bateman Engineering has been awarded a contract for a 50 t/h DMS plant from Almazy Anabara to be deployed at its mining sites in the province of Yakutia (Siberia). The plant was supplied from stock holding and despatched for shipping to the port of St Petersburg in Russia, four weeks after receipt of the order.

Subsequent to this, Bateman Engineering has received orders for a further two DMS plants from Almazy Anabara for its workings in Yakutia. These include a 50 t/h plant modified to 70 t/h and a further 50 t/h plant, both of which were for despatch at the end of November 2010. 

These latest contracts bring the total plants supplied to Almazy Anabara to six over the past three years, including two 100 t/h DMS modules that are the largest capacity modular units supplied to Russia to date. These units were successfully commissioned on site in August this year, having been shipped from South Africa where they were manufactured, to St Petersburg and Vladivostok respectively for onward delivery to site. One unit at a time was shipped as it was ready for despatch to save time in order to meet the Russian ice road requirements. The trip from St Petersburg by rail to the rail head at Berkakit is 7,375 km. Here the containers were off loaded on to road trucks for transport on the ice road to the mine site near the town of Saskylakh, a distance of 2,300 km.

In another award from Russia, a 5 t/h DMS modular plant is being supplied as a stock item to Nizhne-Lenskoye for sampling purposes at its workings in Yakutia. This follows a 60 t/hr modular plant supplied to the same client in 2009. Bateman Engineering has a long track record with Nizhne-Lenskoye supplying both DMS and diamond recovery plants. Its ability to guarantee the performance of the equipment is demonstrated through the numerous projects and studies successfully completed for Nizhne-Lenskoye.

Amongst the many modular plants supplied to the Russian Federation, other recent contracts include a modular sampling plant for the Grib diamond deposit in northwest Russia, awarded by Arkhangelskgeoldobycha in 2009.

Bateman’s modular plant technology is particularly suited to projects in remote and challenging regions. The modular process plants are pre-erected and tested in the works prior to dismantling and packing into shipping containers for transport to site.