June 2014
MODERN MINING
37
EQUIPMENT
gypsum, limestone and salt – but with a signifi-
cant number also in use for the mining of harder
materials such as iron ore, bauxite and granite.
Interestingly, one of Australia’s newer iron
ore mines, FMG’s Cloudbreak in the Pilbara
region of Western Australia, has used surface
miners for mining ore since it shipped its first
product in 2008. FMG (Fortescue Metals Group)
now deploys over 40 Wirtgen surface miners at
Cloudbreak and the neighbouring Christmas
Creek operation (as well as, it must be said, some
units from Vermeer). While iron ore is normally
extremely hard, the particular characteristics of
this deposit – including the friable nature of the
ore and the need to mine selectively – make it
ideal for surface miners. There was apparently
considerable skepticism from the mining com-
munity when FMG first announced its plans
to use surface miners but in practice they have
more than justified the faith placed in them.
Surface miners are particularly well suited
to coal mining and have taken off in India in
Below left:
A Wirtgen
2200 SMworking at an
Indian coal mine. It deposits
the coal in three wind-
rows behind the machine.
Operation in windrowmode
allows material to be cut
independently of the load-
ing process.
Below:
A 4200 SMmines
and loads layers of lignite
for North American Coal
Corporation.
Surface miners are being
used for iron ore mining.
In this photo a 4200 SM is
seen operating for FMG in
Western Australia’s Pilbara
region.
particular where, says Newby, they account for
about 30 % of the country’s coal production.
At one mine alone – the 530 km
2
Gevra mine
– ten Wirtgen 2200 SM units are in operation,
each mining up to 15 000 tonnes of coal a day.
“India has been a big success story for Wirtgen
and now represents one of the Wirtgen group’s
biggest single markets for surface miners,”
says Newby.
While surface miners may have done well
overseas, they have been adopted locally
only on a very limited scale. “We have nine
machines that are active in South Africa and
Botswana,” says Newby. “Among our clients
are Debswana’s Letlhakane diamond mine and
Botswana Ash, both in Botswana, and a gyp-
sum mine belonging to Saint-Gobain in the
Northern Cape, which first introduced one of
our machines in 1983. But the market we would
really like to penetrate is coal, which is why the
Mozambique order is so important. All the coal
producers will be watching the performance of
