In November 2008 Bucyrus Africa, a manufacturer of high productivity mining equipment, delivered the world’s first 35M continuous miner to, the mining company, Anglo Coal’s Goedehoop colliery in Witbank, South Africa. The 35M is specially designed for the hard cutting and high coal seams of the South African room and pillar market. The 35M3 has been in production since mid-December 2008 and, according to Bucyrus, has performed exceptionally well, providing exceptional reliability with no breakdowns over the first full month of production. It is mining in the number four seam with a cutting height of up to 3.5 m.

Bucyrus Africa launched the first Bucyrus continuous miner in South Africa, a 30M3 in February of 2007. Working in conjunction with the customer a number of upgrades were introduced and implemented on the machine in order to further improve the cutting performance in the hard South African coal. Building upon this success, a project to develop a machine specifically for the South African market began in October 2007. Together with some input from Australia and South Africa, the continuous miner design engineering team in Houston, Pennsylvania, USA designed and manufacturing a 35M in less than a year, rolling it out of the Houston facility in July of 2008.

The 88 t 35M design combines additional mass with longer cat tracks, different cutting geometry and lacing as well as improvements to the electrical control system. The company says operator acceptance to the machine has been great and the mine is eagerly anticipating the final commissioning phase in February 2009. Two more 35M machines are on order for delivery in June 2009.

Bucyrus’ surface mining equipment is used for mining coal, copper, iron ore, oil sands and other minerals. Its underground mining equipment is used primarily for mining coal and also used in mining minerals such as potash and trona.