Mining and construction specialist company Sandvik Materials Handling has bucked the trend in the current economic downturn by landing a R450-million contract to design and install 20 conveyors over 6 km in length for the giant Moatize coal project, in Mozambique’s Tete province.

The mining concession is owned by Brazilian resources giant Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale).

Moatize is intended to serve as an anchor project to develop Mozambique’s impoverished Zambezi valley, increasing economic activity and improving social conditions for the people living there.

Sandvik Materials Handling business development manager Jan Detlof-Wismer says that Sandvik’s overland conveyors will be designed to handle the mine’s production of 4 000 t/h from the openpit mine to the secondary and tertiary crushers.

The conveyors will run from the crushers to the civil and coal processing plant (CPP) and then onwards to stockyard and rail road-out systems. Rejected material will be conveyed from the CPP on overland conveyors to a waste disposal system.

“The project involves the detailed design of the conveyors, fabrication and coating the steelwork with corrosion-resistant paint, and the loading of the fabricated sections onto the customer’s transportation vehicles for the journey to Mozambique.

“Work on the detailed design has already begun and the components are due to be handed over to the customer by October this year.

“The contract was stiffly contested by other local design companies, as well as by the Chinese,” Detlof-Wismer says.

Although Vale did not contract to install the conveyors, Sandvik will be providing on-site supervision in the form of technical support to ensure that the components are installed to their specification and engineering practice. This, says Detlof-Wismer, will reduce the overall commissioning period.

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