Zinifex Century Mine, in the remote lower Gulf region of northwest Queensland, is Australia’s largest producer of zinc concentrate. The open cut mine also produces lead concentrate.
The deposit was discovered in 1990 with full commercial production being reached in 2003. Zinifex Century Mine uses conventional open pit mining methods, with the flat-lying ore body covering an area of 1.4 km by 1.2 km with a final depth of 344 m.
Century’s mining fleet moves more than 100 million tonnes of material a year, including approximately 5 million tonnes of ore. The Komatsu 830Es are used almost exclusively for stripping overburden and very occasionally for ore hauling.
Some of these trucks have been operating at Zinifex Century Mine since 1998/99 and are now getting towards the 60,000-hour mark.
Over that time, they’ve had rebuilds – including mid-life engine rebuilds and wheel motor overhauls – but no chassis rebuilds. Century has a rigorous crack-checking program which has not revealed any chassis cracks to date.
The entire fleet is averaging 88% availability, with mechanical availability for January 2008 finishing at 91%. Mean-time-between-failure for the month was 50 hours, and mean-time-to-repair was about two hours.
Zinifex purchased the 12 new 830Es last year in order to accelerate its overburden-stripping program, ensuring access to the ore body through to the end of 2010.
John Lamb, the General Manager of Zinifex Century Mine said, "The Komatsu fleet has performed reliably on this site for nearly a decade. They’re a credit to the brand and a great asset to us."