During the sixth In-Pit Crushing & Conveying Conference – IPCC 2022 in Cancun, Mexico, held 28-29 April, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore had the chance to sit down with Neville Kelly – Business Development Manager and Elia Khoury – Engineering Manager at Bunbury, Western Australia based RCR Mining Technologies, which has seen remarkable growth and success with its IPCC solutions in the Pilbara iron ore mining hub of Western Australia in recent years – a journey reviewed in their presentation at the conference, entitled “IPCC – a vision realised.” Since 2018 alone, this has included large relocatable overland conveyors, relocatable FEL fed in-pit crushers and autonomous mining truck fed semi-relocatable in-pit crushers.
Kelly and Khoury emphasised that the key to this success has been collaboration with the end user across all facets of the mining lifecycle. They also emphasised that using data analytics across installed equipment provides improved predictive maintenance tools and process improvement opportunities.
Q Can you give some idea of how technologies like stacker conveyors, relocabtable conveyors, belt feeders and heavy duty feeders have helped and are helping the WA iron ore industry achieve its productivity goals? Why is RCR chosen?
RCR OEM equipment is critical in helping meet our clients’ production goals. Our clients’ often talk about the reliability and performance of RCR equipment, and how important that is for their operation. RCR’s relocatable overland conveyors and crushing plant solutions have allowed one major iron ore miner to turn one of their lowest performing sites to one of the best performing sites over a five year period. RCR apron, belt and hybrid feeders are recognised in the marketplace as high performing and reliable products. We take on board what our customers tell us. Some time ago an iron ore miner stated that “the only thing that goes wrong on RCR apron feeders is the return rollers.” After a collaborative design improvement exercise, RCR created a new and improved version of its return roller which has been a huge success since, leading the same client to say: “now we have no problems with RCR apron feeders.”
Q Would you describe RCR’s strengths as both its engineering capabilities combined with design innovation?
RCR’s design and delivery capability is a pre-requisite to truly understanding our clients’ application needs and allowing us the ability to provide them with an innovative and tailored solution. Furthermore, the ability to deliver the solution in an expedited timeframe provides immense value and a timely return on investment for our clients.
Q What does being part of NRW bring to RCR and vice versa?
NRW Holdings (ASX: NWH) has brought strong leadership, strong market reputation, and a fully vertically integrated delivery model which allows the NRW group to deliver full multidiscipline projects under one roof. NRW’s growth and vision through its acquisition of RCR Mining Technologies, Primero and Diab is fulfilling their vision, to deliver quality products and full multidisciplined services across the industry. RCR in turn has brought a unique dimension to the NRW group through its OEM product line and unique engineering solutions.
Q On the IPCC units you have built for the mineral sands industry, what lessons have been learned, what comparative advantages have been seen versus “standard” mineral sands mining and could similar designs be adapted for hard rock mining or coal overburden?
The large-scale IPCC units delivered into mineral sands have challenged the norms of traditional conventional mineral sands mining allowing large scale processing to sit on fully mobile platforms in-pit, with reduced interfaces and transfers, reduced downtime for relocation, reduced mobile mining fleet, and made high relocation frequencies viable. We definitely see that the lessons learnt on these applications are transferable to other commodities and have been key to our latest successes in iron ore.
Q How important is ongoing maintenance provision in your equipment solution contracts?
Ongoing maintenance provisions is a critical part of the RCR Mining Technologies business and a necessary requirement for our clients to ensure they maintain reliabile and sustaining assets. RCR service agreements are also a big part of our offerings. Service agreements provide our clients with trained RCR technicians who will audit and service RCR equipment on an application specific basis for OEM equipment. Furthermore, the service agreements provide a streamlined approach for identification and purchase of spare parts for our clients. This service agreement model removes unplanned outages and maintenance which can significantly impact on our clients’ production targets.
