‘Remote support’ takes on a whole new meaning when a mine site is located on an island in the Buccaneer Archipelago, 130km north of the Kimberley town of Derby, according to Jason Lambert from Komatsu, as we recently became the single-OEM load and haul partner for Mt Gibson Iron’s Koolan Island mine.
Koolan Island boasts Australia’s highest grade hematite ore reserves, averaging over 65% Fe – but getting to it is tricky, with parts and supplies coming by barge from Perth or Broome.
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The site converted to an all-Komatsu fleet of 9 x HD1500-8s dump trucks and 2 x PC4000-11s hydraulic excavators to simplify machinery supply and support.
Jason says Koolan saw advantages of having their load and haul fleet all supported by a single OEM.
“Head-to-head, our HD1500-8 truck offered the Koolan Island site improved performance and productivity over their existing fleet, especially in cycle times, safety, capital price and maintainability. Our trucks deliver improved productivity over the competitor, and overall running costs are lower, meaning lower costs over a longer period of time for the site.
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“Along with this, we were able to package our PC4000-11s in the deal, as Koolan saw substantial value in dealing with one OEM for their entire load & haul fleet, creating overall site efficiencies,” he says.
Jason says the support package developed for Koolan Island had many contingencies to help minimise downtime if issues were to arise.
“We included a full support program to assist the site with change management. This included having one of our product specialists embedded on their site for two years to help with set up, service and support.
“We also organised a parts support bundle onsite which stocked some critical parts they may need. Rather than having to wait for parts to arrive from Perth, the shipping container has a select bundle of parts including fan belts, hoses, etc to save on downtime should any machine issues arise,” Jason says.
Embedded Resources are a part of our overall Mining Solutions product offering and involves us placing highly skilled and experienced mining professionals into customers’ operations, to ensure their Komatsu mining equipment is performing, productive and profitable.
The team works closely with customers to ensure the right equipment is chosen to suit operations, conduct on-site application studies, perform machine performance tests, and carry out studies on payload, GHG emissions, and overall productivity onsite to continuously identify opportunities for site improvement.
“Our Embedded Resources team are experienced professionals with years of mine site knowledge, that are a great addition to our customers, like Koolan, in need of some additional onsite support.”
To find out more about our Mining Solutions, visit www.komatsu.com.au/innovation/smart-solutions