As a vital aspect of a plant expansion at a manganese mine in the Northern Cape of South Africa, Kwatani says it is supplying four heavy duty vibrating screens and 10 feeders to help boost throughput.
According to Kwatani CEO, Kim Schoepflin, this large-scale equipment is custom-designed and engineered for tonnage to meet the mine’s challenging operational requirements.
“Manganese ore is very demanding on vibrating screens as it has a high specific gravity and is also very abrasive,” Schoepflin says. “Our machines are engineered to perform the application’s duty requirement while being robust enough to deliver maximum uptime.”
The units being supplied include a 3.6 m double-deck scalping screen, a 3 m double-deck screen, a 2.4 m screen and a 1.8 m dewatering screen. A local OEM that has designed and engineered vibrating screens for over four decades, Kwatani has built a reputation for world-class expertise and capability, it says.
“Customers choose us for our engineering track record – developing technology that can manage the tonnages they require,” Schoepflin says. “This means understanding each mine’s specific conditions, and then building a design to meet a range of complex mechanical and metallurgical factors.”
The order to the mine is being rolled out on time and on specification to the customer’s satisfaction, according to Kwatani COO, Kenny Mayhew-Ridgers.
“The efficiency and quality of our work process allows us to design, manufacture and deliver custom-designed screens in the same timeframes that other OEMs deliver standard models,” Mayhew-Ridgers said.
This is particularly demanding as custom-designed equipment undergo an intensive design process after being verified by rigorous finite element analysis in-house, Kwatani says. Prior to dispatch, all units endure intensive testing before being commissioned on a customer’s site. For this reason, Kwatani boasts its own in-house advanced testing facilities at its Kempton Park facility, in South Africa. Aligned to ISO 9001 standards, the testing protocols have been developed in-house with decades of experience. This allows full testing similar to cold commissioning, even before delivery to site.