Horizon Conveyor Equipment Ltd has been awarded a contact to supply some of the integral components for 11 conveyors that will be in use at the new £130 million Drakelands tungsten and tin mine at Hemerdon near Plymouth when it opens next year. Horizon’s package of bespoke products includes idler sets, stainless steel rollers, specially designed v-ploughs for belt return scraping, skirt rubbers and tracking equipment.
The conveyors are being designed, built and installed by Centristic Ltd, a specialist in materials handling systems based in South Devon. Centristic was contracted for the project by Australian engineering firm GR Engineering Services, which is building the processing plant at Drakelands for mine developer Wolf Minerals.
Operations are scheduled to start at the open pit mine in mid-2015, making it the first new metal mine to be opened in Britain for 45 years.
As part of its role in the project, Horizon was commissioned to design and manufacture low-profile v-ploughs that could be accommodated into the very shallow areas of the conveyor system. These were designed and built in-house at the company’s factory in Halesowen, West Midlands. Fitted together with Horizon’s SCA Primary and S-Type Secondary scrapers, they provide the complete conveyor belt cleaning solutions for all of the conveyors on-site.
Conveyor belt widths of 800 mm, 1,000 mm and 1,800 mm will be carried by more than 2,800 Horizon idlers which were constructed in-house using the company’s new CNC lathes and welding machines. Horizon has also supplied its own quick-release skirt clamps system and skirting rubber that seal the conveyors in areas where there is a risk of mined materials spilling off the belts.
Alan Bowler, Managing Director of Horizon Conveyor Equipment, said: “We are very proud to be playing a role in the development of the Drakelands mine. Like all our projects we have provided advice, specialist design and build services to ensure that these products meet the specifications of Centristic and the mine operator. By manufacturing 95% of our products in-house, our design team have the flexibility to produce project-specific components to a very high standard at low cost. That makes this a real UK design-and-build success story.”
Tungsten was discovered near Hemerdon in 1867 and the site is now recognised by the British Geological Society as the fourth largest tungsten resource in the world. Mining took place during both World Wars and planning permission to reopen the mine was granted in 1986, with speciality metals company Wolf Minerals becoming involved in the project in 2007 and leading it successfully through to a start on site in March 2014.
The open pit mine will measure 850 m long and 450 m wide and reach a depth of 200 m . Annual production at the mine is expected to reach 5,000 t of tungsten concentrate and 1,000 t of tin concentrate.