Largest Sandvik cone crushers to be installed at Namibian uranium mine
Six of the largest Sandvik cone crushers –CH880s – are to be installed at the greenfield Trekkopje uranium mine project in Namibia. The order follows the ground-breaking delivery of six similar crushers to the Tati Nickel Mine in Botswana in 2007, according to Gavin Harries, Regional Sales Manager for Africa at Sandvik Mining and Construction.
The more than USD700 M Namibian project – owned by the global French energy group Areva – is a very large, low-grade, shallow uranium source that consists of two deposits; the Trekkopje deposit and the Klein Trekkopje deposit, located approximately seven kilometers apart. The mine is expected to become one of the world's ten largest uranium mines when it is fully commissioned and it will also be one of the top five low-cost open-pit uranium operations in the world. The mining tenement covers an area of over 30,000 hectares, with the Rossing Uranium mine situated 35 kilometers south of the property and the newly developed Langer Heinrich uranium mine located 81 kilometers to the southeast.
The six Sandvik crushers, which will be used to process 100,000 tonnes of ore a day from an open-pit operation situated in an arid desert region about 65 kilometers inland from the coastal town of Swakopmund, will be manufactured at a Sandvik plant in Sweden and delivered to the mine via the Namibian port of Walvis Bay. Installation is scheduled for October this year (2010).
The Trekkopje mine, which began producing uranium oxide in small quantities last year, is scheduled to reach full production by 2012. Mining activities include topsoil and overburden removal, drilling, blasting, loading, and feeding of ore to the plant for treatment. Ore removed from the pit will be transported to a moveable primary crusher located nearby, and then taken by conveyors to two Sandvik CH880 crushers for secondary crushing and to four CH880 crushers for tertiary crushing, to produce a final product size of -38 millimeters before the material is delivered to the agglomerators and heap leach pad.
According to Gavin Harries, the vast experience of Sandvik as a mining equipment supplier world-wide and the proven high productivity and reliability of the CH880 crushers were the main reasons that Sandvik won the order."This is the first Sandvik order placed by Areva Mining in Africa and we are pleased to be one of the suppliers to the Trekkopje mine. Since Areva Mining is one of the biggest global companies in the field, this will be a reference of great importance for Sandvik as a mining equipment supplier," Harries said.
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