Vedanta’s Hindustan Zinc Ltd (HZL), one of the world’s largest zinc-lead-silver producers, in its Q1 2020 report says that a major milestone has been achieved with the start of ore hauling post commissioning of the 955 m, 7.5 m diameter production shaft during the quarter. While the underground mine has been operating for a number of years using the decline access, the shaft completion will enable Rampura Agucha Underground to finally achieve its slated ore production capacity of over 5 Mt/y.
The underground mine also includes two ventilation shafts, two declines from surface and paste fill plants. The mining method is longhole open stoping with paste filling. The open pit mine in the same complex has been operating since 1990. The three shaft hoists were all supplied by ABB and consist of two friction hoists and one single drum hoist. The sinking of the three shafts was all contracted to Shaft Sinkers back in 2012 but significant delays have been experienced as that company faced severe financial difficulties; it went on to be acquired by UMS Group in 2015.
Hindustan Zinc is designing the expanded mine to be as optimsed as possible in terms of processes, equipment and technology. Last year it said it had has selected Epiroc to equip Rampura Agucha with Mobilaris Mining Intelligence™ (MMI), a decision support solution for mine safety and efficiency. MMI enables superior situational awareness and is designed to visualise and support mining operations in all its complexities, in real-time.
HZL uses contract miner Barminco (part of Perenti) at the mine, which has been carrying out mine development works since 2016 and last year saw its development contract extended by 3.5 years in a A$100 million deal with production mining added. Capital equipment and consumables are provided by HZL with equipment in a mixed fleet which includes Sandvik, Epiroc and Cat loading, hauling and drilling equipment of various ages including Epiroc MT6020 trucks, Sandvik LH517 and Cat R2900 LHDs.
RCT last year also entered into its first automation project in India, commissioning its technology on machinery at Rampura Agucha Underground. The agreement with HZL and Barminco saw ControlMaster® Guidance Automation installed on two of the Cat R2900 underground LHDs at the mine. These loaders are undertaking teleremote mining in open stopes developed by Barminco.
Elsewhere in HZL, at Zawar, the two backfill plants are under load trials and back filling of voids is expected to commence in May 2020. This initiative will improve mine stability and provide an opportunity for pillar mining to remove left-out high-grade ore. At Rajpura Dariba, the existing production shaft is being upgraded from 0.7 to 1.3 Mt/y over two phases to debottleneck the mine; an upgrade to 0.9 Mt/y is expected to complete in FY2021 and further increase to 1.3 Mt/y in FY2022.
