Weir Minerals Africa says that it has the capacity to design and build complete plants for customers that need to rapidly ramp up production, such as when commodity prices rise.

The company is able to put together products such as its Trio jaw and cone crushers, Trio feeders, Enduron high pressure grinding rolls (HPGRs) and Enduron vibrating screens, to form a complete plant.  This helps to speed up the design and construction phases and, with plant equipment available ex-stock or locally manufactured, allows lead times to be reduced and plants to be completed cost effectively and quickly, says Weir Minerals Africa product manager: comminution Theo Hendricks.

“These tend to be process plants on the smaller side of the size spectrum, up to about 500 t/h capacity,” says Hendricks. “Designed in a modular format, these are fitted with any combination of our well-known Trio jaw and cone crushers, Trio feeders and Enduron vibrating screens.”

The turnkey approach includes providing all the structures for the equipment, and the conveyors to move material between different sections of the plant. Weir Minerals Africa advanced applications engineer Karabo Moalamedi emphasises that best practice is applied in all aspects of the engineering and design, to ensure safety, performance and easy access for regular maintenance.

At the front end of the plant is the primary station, which usually includes a run-of-mine hopper, a Trio vibrating grizzly feeder, a Trio jaw crusher and an Enduron screen. Where the material has a high clay or moisture content, a Trio apron feeder is recommended. At the secondary crushing stage, a combination of Trio cone crushers and Enduron screens is usually installed, while Enduron HPGRs are included in the tertiary phase where finer material is required.

To accurately plan the design and location in existing facilities, three-dimensional (3D) scanning is used to plot where infrastructure is already in place, explains Moalamedi. The plant design can also be rendered in 3D, providing a detailed visualisation to guide final decision-making.

The plant is trial-erected at Weir Minerals Africa’s facility before being shipped to site, where its specialist technicians supervise the on-site installation and commissioning. Ongoing technical support is also provided.