With a well-established and strong presence in the African mining industry, comminution solutions company Metso Minerals South Africa, subsidiary of Finland-based Metso Minerals Group, plans to further bolster and expand its presence in the African construction sector.

Its presence is evident in the plants and sales and service outlets in 14 locations in the Middle East and Africa region, including South Africa, Algeria, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Dubai.

Metso Minerals South Africa sales and service VP Eric Maricot says that while African mining investment was strong from 2010 to 2012, it declined during 2013 and 2014. During this time, however, investment in the construction sector increased, and he believes this trend will continue over the next five to ten years, owing to a lack of infrastructure in African countries.

“For these countries to grow, investment in infrastructure development through construc-tion, also needs to grow,” he says.

Metso Minerals South Africa’s sales in Africa involve the mining and construction industry, as well as scrap yards, waste-handling companies and recycling companies.

The company’s product and service offering includes mining and construction equipment, spares, maintenance and performance services, as well as intelligent solutions and automation services.

Metso Minerals services not only big industry players, including diversified miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, as well as cement, aggregate and building material producers Afrisam, Lafarge, Holcim and Afrimat, but also smaller, family-owned aggregate and civil construction businesses.

One such example of a plant delivered to a smaller-sized family-owned business is the 300 t/h crushing and screening plant that was supplied to Mozambique-based construction company JRC Construction (JRC – Construções e obras púiblicas, SA) last year.

JRC Construction placed the order with Metso Minerals’ Portugal office in December 2012. The plant components arrived on site in June 2013. Site preparation and installation took place in July last year and the plant was commissioned in October.

Speaking at a site visit to the aggregate plant and quarry in Muamba, Mozambique, last month, Metso Minerals Portugal construction sales GM for Portugal, Angola and Mozambique Paulo Leitão said the plant was a modular unit speci-fically designed for processing rock up to an abrasiveness of 1.350 g/t.

The plant consists of a Nordberg C 120 primary jaw crusher and a Nordberg NP1213 secondary impact crusher. It also comprises a Nordberg CVB 2661-4 four-deck vibrating screen, which produces aggregate products ranging from 0 mm to 5 mm,
5 mm to 15 mm, 15 mm to 25 mm and 25 mm to 40 mm in size, which are used for concrete mixing plants, asphalt mixing plants, roads, civil construction, construction and landscaping.

The aggregate produced is used by JRC Construction for civil construction, while the rest is sold on the market.

Leitão says Metso Minerals has had a presence in the Mozambique market for the past four years and has supplied and installed mobile, fixed and modular plants.

“Our most recent order of a Nordberg NP1450 primary impact crushing plant was also placed by JRC Construction.

“The equipment is being manufactured and will be delivered to site next month. Crushing will start in December once the plant has been commissioned,” Leitão said.

Other key contracts in the mining and construction sector carried out by Metso Minerals include an order to supply a primary crusher and grinding equipment to Namibia- and Toronto-listed miner B2Gold for use at its Namibia-based greenfield Otjikoto gold mine project, 300 km north of Windhoek.

An order for two Nordberg MP 2500 cone crushers and one Nordberg MP 1250 cone crusher was placed by base metals miner First Quantum Minerals subsidiary Kalumbila Minerals for use at the Sentinel copper project, in north- west Zambia.