Opening a new service centre in Mackay was a statement of intent for leading mining equipment specialist FLS.
Queensland has seen its share of exciting mining developments over the 12 months. From coal through to critical minerals, the state’s resources sector is firing on all cylinders.
Of course, a world-class resources sector would quickly come to a halt without the support of similarly world-class mining services suppliers.
As part of its commitment to Queensland’s mining industry, FLS opened a new service centre in Mackay last year to address that very need.
FLS head of site sales, Indonesia and eastern Australia Karl Spaleck said the new centre has been established to play a key role in supporting the state’s mining industry, with a particular focus on north Queensland, including the Mount Isa region.
“We’ve always had plans to grow in north Queensland,” Spaleck told Australian Mining. “It was really just a matter of where we could provide the best service and be closest to our customers.”
Despite already operating centres in Mackay and Rockhampton, there was a recognition from FLS that a larger facility was needed to handle current and future demand. The company could see opportunities emerging across Queensland, from Harmony’s Eva copper project in the north, where FLS is supplying the gyratory crusher, to coal operations in the Bowen Basin.
To service that growth, FLS had to consider exactly what a new centre should look like and where it should be located.
Spaleck said the smaller centres had reached their limits in size and expansion, which prompted a search for the right site in the best location.
It turned out that Mackay – which sits in the heart of Queensland’s busiest mining provinces, making it a central and easily accessible hub for customers – offered the ideal location.
The new site is also large enough to take on some of the warehousing duties previously carried out at FLS’s Pinkenba service centre, enabling equipment and machinery to be stored closer to operational sites.
“We don’t have to keep everything in Pinkenba now. That has cut down delivery times by about 19 hours, which means a lot less downtime for customers,” Spaleck said.
In addition to being closer to customers, the Mackay facility is designed to handle a broader range of equipment than the company’s previous smaller locations in the region, including major rebuilds of gyratory crushers.
“We have a 130-tonne overhead crane in there, so heavy pieces of equipment are now very easy to handle, and you’ve got the hard stand to do it on,” Spaleck said.
“There’s no problem working on the ABON sizers in there, as well. You can have a workshop, but if the concrete flooring is not up to standard you can’t put an ABON sizer in it.”
FLS carries out extensive work for coal customers, and the new centre provided an opportunity to rethink the best way to service those operations.
“It’s close to our service exchange program, we’re able to do the ABON sizers, and we’re able to do the rebuilds for the owner-operated equipment in the Mackay workshop,” Spaleck said.
Starting with a fresh slate, FLS has built a modern centre engineered to deliver faster access to critical spare parts, complete major equipment rebuilds and broaden the technical support available to miners across the state.
The Mackay centre was one of seven FLS service centres expanded or opened in strategic locations around the globe as part of the company’s renewed focus on mining services and its CORE’26 mining strategy.
Spaleck said the successful establishment of the new centre was helped by being able to draw upon the experiences of the four other major service centres FLS has around Australia. Importantly, it was also shaped by the input and requirements of local customers.
“We knew what we wanted to do with our customers here,” Spaleck said. “We know the region well, and we know Queensland mining well. We feel that this is a service centre that can support our customers well.”
This feature appeared in the February issue of Australian Mining magazine.