Boart Longyear will next month take advantage of a longwall move at Capcoal’s Southern colliery in central Queensland to retrieve the mine’s MCLE1700 Mitsui shearer and send it to Mackay for a comprehensive "mid-term" assessment at its workshop. The Australian distributor of Mitsui longwall equipment is confident the tests will help it finalise a competitive contract package for other mines.
Introduced at Southern in February last year, the multi-motor MCLE1700 shearer has cut about 2.5 million tonnes of coal. Boart Longyear’s Mitsui product manager Chris Hines said the unit was designed to cut 5Mt and did not need be taken out of the mine. "We will be checking some wear areas to ascertain what will be required at the 5Mt mark," he said.
"The checks would normally be conducted on the face at the mine.
"Once we have the total data from the 2.5Mt already cut and the results of what we have done to it at this current wall move, we will be able to project a more accurate maintenance cost per tonne for the machine and that will allow us to put forward an attractive and cost effective maintenance proposal to prospective customers."
The stint at Boart Longyear’s Mackay workshop will also enable the company to fit new down drives to the shearer to enable it to be properly integrated with Southern’s new Longwall Associates armoured face conveyor.
Hines said Boart Longyear’s offer to the industry with the new shearer would be simple: 5Mt of coal cut, with no overhauls, at a fixed rate. A detailed picture of availability, maintenance and operating costs would flow from the upcoming machine assessment.
