Uncategorised

Xstrata’s Newlands mine sets record with Bucyrus EL3000 longwall shearer

Xstrata’s Newlands Northern underground mine, located in the Bowen Basin, Queensland, set a new Australian annual production record in 2009 using the Bucyrus EL3000 shearer.

The mine produced more than 8.318 million tonnes in 2009, which was a 9.1% increase on the previous record of 7.628 million tonnes set in 2007 by fellow Xstrata mine Beltana.

Beltana, located in NSW, was also operating a Bucyrus EL3000 shearer.

Newlands also set a new monthly production record in May last year and then bettered it in October. According to the company, the annual record was achieved despite a longwall move mid-year.

Xstrata says productivity at Newlands has been steadily increasing since a new Bucyrus EL3000 shearer was installed in 2006.

The 8.318 million tonnes extracted in 2009 is getting close to double the 4.49 million tonnes mined in the first year of operation.

The Newlands Northern Mine’s longwall is completely Bucyrus-equipped, with most of the equipment originally being supplied to Newlands Southern Mine as early as 1998 but still performing well.

The longwall works with an EL3000 shearer with total installed power of 1.590 kW, including two cutters with 650 kW of power each.

The Newlands mine produces export thermal coal from underground and open-cut operations, located about 130 km from Mackay.

Leave a Reply

Send this to a friend