Issue

One of Andvare’s key Clients constructed a new high grade iron ore mine and export port facility in the Canadian Arctic in 2015. The facility was originally designed to achieve an outload capacity of 3.5 Mtpa, however, due to various performance issues the facility only achieved 0.9 Mtpa shipped in 2015. Andvare provided quality management, construction management and commissioning services to the Client to implement the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s warranty work to the system. Despite the warranty work, the modified system still experienced extensive reliability issues as the result of improper materials handling design, namely:

• Incorrectly designed chutes saw material impacting upon wear plates at extreme velocities, in places at over 100km/h;
• Improper belt profile design restricted the material handling capacity;
• Poor skirt design leading to significant belt wear and damage;
• Flawed belt drive arrangements and tensioning resulted in problems with belt slippage and difficulty in controlling variable speed drive pulleys.

Solution

Andvare provided the design and Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management services for the purposes of upgrading the performance of the ship loading circuit.

• Andvare’s design team utilised the latest in modelling software to simulate the material flow through along belts and through chutes to optimise the remedial works and increase capacity of the system. Over two shipping seasons, Andvare was able to alleviate most of the performance issues and increased the total annual production capacity to 6 Mtpa nameplate, almost twice the original nameplate capacity without increasing the installed drive power or conveying speeds.
• Andvare’s European division headed the fabrication, local procurement and logistics to deliver a complete package to site.
• Andvare provided the Engineering, Procurement, Construction Management and Commissioning services, including fabrication, transport and logistics, for the purposes of upgrading the performance of the shiploading circuit.
• Andvare’s project team maintained an onsite Construction Management and Commissioning role overseeing the works by the construction contractor.

Benefits

• Andvare provided the client with a turn-key solution including fabrication and procurement from several continents, including Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, Australia and North America.
• Significantly reduced Operational and Maintenance costs through extensive optimisation of chute wear liner packs and ore flow optimisation.
• Re-engineering of the main reclaim belt drive configuration and correction of the belt tensioning system.
• Increase in system annualised production capacity, delivered at a fraction of the cost of capital expansion.

During the 2019 shipping season and despite not being able to stack a sufficient quantity of ore due to bad weather the same system shipped 5.9 Mt. The system is now capable of shipping over 6 Mtpa, which is a 600% increase in four years.

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