Shell South Africa Marketing (Shell) is pleased to announce that its excavator grease replenishment process has now been revolutionised. This is according to Shell’s commercial technical manager, Raymond Abraham.

“Shell identified a solution to improve mining customer’s stock replenishment process and reduce excavator downtime: the Shell Bulk Grease Truck service working alongside on-site trucks. It delivers more grease at a faster rate directly to the excavators and fills each to capacity every time,” says Abraham.

Boasting the latest technology and features, the Shell Bulk Grease Truck is part of Shell Lubricant’s value-added offering to its mining customers.

The truck is able to pump both open gear lubricant and multi-purpose grease at rates of 45 kg for each minute as opposed to the standard 10 kg for each minute.

By improving the excavator grease replenishment process using the Shell Bulk Grease Truck, Shell Lubricant’s mining customers, such as Becsa (Middelburg and Klipspruit), Xstrata Mpunzi and Optimum mines have benefited prime function of their draglines and reduced labour costs.
According to Abraham, each and every customer has its own ship to account, which is used for billing purposes when deliveries are made to the customers with the grease truck.

“A pod is produced from an on-board metering system on the truck that is signed off by the customer after refilling. This allows customers to track the amount of grease used by the dragline improving planning and ordering processes for the mine,” explains Abraham.

The service has also increased mine staff safety, a tangible deliverable in terms of Shell Lubricant’s commitment to Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) standards. “Filling the swing gearboxes of the draglines with grease from drums has always been a safety concern for many mining customers; in addition, the ingress of contaminants introduced through this conventional process exacerbates the problem.

Using the Shell Grease Truck enables us to supply mines with grease in bulk, and removes the need for employees to decant the grease themselves,” says Abraham.