Murray & Roberts has announced that its subsidiary Terra Nova Technologies, Inc (TNT), in joint venture with Ingeniería y Construcción Sigdo Koppers SA, has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with a large copper producer for a mine in South America. The contract value is approximately US$200 million, with TNT’s share in the joint venture being 51%.
The scope of work includes a primary crushing facility, a 6.3 km long overland conveyor, a 23 kV power transmission system, and associated infrastructure. Starting in April 2024, the project is expected to have a duration of 27 months. M&R said: “This significant award reinforces TNT’s strong capability to deliver complete EPC material handling systems in Latin America and is a welcome order for the business who had to rebuild its order book since the end of COVID, as limited materials handling opportunities came to market during this period.”
TNT, headquartered in California, provides materials handling design, consulting services, design/supply sourcing, and general contracting to the mining and minerals processing and other bulk materials industries throughout the world. TNT was acquired by Cementation Americas in 2019 and was a strong contributor to M&R earnings in the year prior to the pandemic.
The primary crushing facility will be a modular primary gyratory station and follows the successful execution of a similar project at BHP’s Spence mine in Chile. For the forthcoming in-pit crushing & conveying report in IM‘s May edition, TNT’s Director of Business Development, Paul Emerson commented: “One of TNT’s key developments has been the advancement of their modular primary gyratory crushing stations. These stations, designed for flexibility and efficiency, can be installed quickly in large, prefabricated modules. Mine operators have the option to choose between fixed or semi-mobile relocatable units, providing the ideal balance between the stability of traditional fixed installations and the flexibility of fully mobile systems – both well-suited for longer mine life applications and high-volume throughputs.”
On the stacking front, TNT is currently completing the construction and commissioning of a high-capacity Super Portable® stacking system in Arizona and has recently commenced engineering on a project that will feature a stacking system comprising several overland conveyors, a mobile overland tripper, and a large stacking system consisting of twenty-one pieces of propriety Super Portable® mobile stacking equipment.
This system is designed to facilitate the processing of an estimated 90,000 t/d of crushed copper ore within a large multi-lift heap leach stacking pad, and is essentially the same technology that TNT would utilise for high capacity waste stacking associated with IPCC systems. Furthermore, TNT is continuing to focus on the adaptation and development of their high-capacity Super Portable® technology into the filtered dry tails arena, considering the added benefits of utilising the same mobile stacking equipment to stack filtered tails for the co-disposal of waste rock.
By combining their decades of experience using both high-capacity Super Portable® mine stacking systems and their filtered tails experience at the world’s largest multi-lift, dual fully redundant filtered tails stacking facility, TNT says it can offer solutions that are based on well proven technology. As the mining industry continues to navigate the challenges of sustainability and environmental stewardship, TNT adds that its philosophy is to not only support the mining industry’s economic goals but also its environmental responsibilities, demonstrating a balance between operational demands and ecological considerations.