Weir Minerals Africa is making a substantial investment into its newly acquired Xmeco Foundry in Port Elizabeth that will upgrade it to the point where these facilities will be capable of not only producing the company’s requirements from an African perspective, but also having sufficient capacity to supply other businesses within the Weir Group globally. The Xmeco Foundry occupies a 4.5 ha site in the Neave township of Port Elizabeth, where it manufactures castings varying in size from a few kilos to a maximum of 18 t in a variety of alloys.
“This facility is capable of ramping up to about 1,000 t/mth and we believe it’s potentially one of the lower cost facilities in the world for the production of our parts,” Dave Athey, Weir Minerals Africa Regional MD for Middle East and Africa, said. “We’re already looking at the possibility of supplying cast products into the Canadian oil sands sector. As higher oil prices and new technology enable profitable extraction and processing, these bitumen sands have only recently been considered to be part of the world’s oil reserves. The Weir Enterprise Resource Planning system has been implemented at the foundry and we’re currently deploying the Weir Production System. As we ramp up production at this heavy bay foundry, we will start seeing improvements in our own internal operating efficiencies. The Xmeco Foundry complements our existing African operation, adding the heavy bay capacity that is vital for future growth and boosting our existing foundry expertise with valuable new talent and specialised foundry personnel. It will also enhance productivity with the application of Weir’s lean philosophy in the production, manufacturing technology, supply chain and front-end business processes.”
He added: “A big advantage of this foundry and, indeed one of the main reasons it was chosen as an acquisition target, is its proximity to the deep water Port of Ngqura. Typically, the Canadian oil sands use very large pumps and pump components, and a single pour for a component or part could be up to 20 tons. Being so close to a major port will help us achieve significant savings in logistics costs.”
Athey also commented that there has been a shift in the mining environment that is seeing a change in thinking about how the major mining houses progress with their capital expenditure: “The major mining houses have announced they intend reducing the amount of money spent on new greenfield capital projects, in favour of a stronger focus on brownfield expansion and operating efficiencies. This is both good and bad news. The bad news obviously is that the future growth of new greenfield projects will slow, but the good news is that there will be increasing emphasis on operating efficiencies and operational output. To achieve this, local mines will need best performing equipment including best in class wear components, and this is one of the areas in which we’ve excelled. The Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) theme underpins the design of all our equipment with a focus on issues around engineering, hydraulics and the cost of materials, as well as how quickly and easily components can be changed out, repaired and maintained. Another big drive for us over the past five years has been to develop a superior installed service base that is on the doorstep of our major customer hubs in all the major mining countries of Africa. This has created a genuine competitive edge for our company.”
In addition, Athey says there has been a robust internal focus on product development. In the past two years the company has introduced new pump ranges, namely the SLR and WBH slurry pumps and the MCR mill circuit pumps. These designs have replaced the original Warman style pumps with new technologies that incorporate new improved hydraulics, higher efficiencies and new materials and components. Weir Minerals Africa produces a large proportion of these products in-house importing only items such as electric motors, bearings and natural rubber, resulting in about 95% local content. The company has its own manufacturing facilities and also outsources certain items to local third party manufacturing facilities.