In today’s tough economic climate, mill liners can no longer be regarded as a commodity. Mill reliability is becoming paramount to ensure plant productivity and buying cheap liners could jeopardise the required production levels. Multotec states that it is therefore “focusing with increasing intensity on identifying mill-related productivity issues in order to implement changes and improvements to liner design and achieve optimum performance and longer life.

“Longer liner life not only reduces the re-line frequency, which maximises production levels, but also extends the period of optimal grinding efficiency,” Multotec Rubber’s Managing Director, Spike Taylor, says. “Although our core business does not include mill liner handling equipment, we’re certainly in a position to advise customers on equipment that will reduce re-line downtime, as well as the safety of re-line operations. To this end, we include attachment systems into our liners that complement new or existing liner handlers and we’re able to custom design liners to suit specific equipment. For example, our Heavy Duty MultoMet liners can be manufactured with lugs that match the liner handling system.”

Multotec has invested heavily over the past few years in materials handling equipment and moulds for its facilities to increase production efficiencies and reduce costs. These improvements also benefit customers in the form of faster delivery times, OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and improved operator safety. On the IT side, the company has also made a significant investment into implementing a software package that designs and costs its rubber and rubber composite liners in accordance with best practice for mill liners.

“We’ve recognised that while our in-house installation teams are providing a major benefit to customers, the rapidly changing schedules of mill shutdowns present a challenge in terms of deploying the correct manpower at the correct time,” Taylor says. “To address this, we’re putting plans in place to increase our manpower and to better monitor the liners to predict when the shutdown needs to take place. While rubber mill linings haven’t experienced any step-change improvements in design for many years, Multotec invites mill owners and operators to visit our stand at Electra Mining Africa 2012 from 10 to 14 September, to engage with our experts on the alternative designs that will be on display,” he concludes. “We’ll be showcasing six different liners with a variety of features to present recent improvements and highlight how these can benefit customers.”