Mobile crane hire company Johnson Crane Hire has completed two heavy lifts for mining and bulk handling equipment supplier Tenova Takraf and civil engineer EMC Engineering at the Kolomela iron-ore mine, in the Northern Cape, achieving significant cost and time savings for both clients by working on the same project site and on the same piece of machinery.

The heavy lifts, completed in 11 days, involved a counterweight boom exchange and a bucket wheel exchange on a stacker reclaimer at the mine. The lifts for the boom exchange were undertaken for Tenova while EMC Engineering handled the bucket wheel exchange.

Johnson Crane Hire heavy lift technical manager Brandon Grange says careful planning ensured that the project timeline flowed as intended. “This attention to detail during the planning phase allowed us the flexibility to select a solution that would meet both customers’ needs and . . . the stringent safety requirements in the mining sector.”

The lift of the counterweight boom was a repeat process, having previously been performed by Johnson Crane Hire for EMC Engineering on another project. In this case, however, the newly engineered counterweight boom was stronger and, therefore, heavier, necessitating the use of a larger crane.

The scope of the heavy lift for Tenova comprised the removal of the counterweight and, following this, the removal of the previous counterweight boom. The new counterweight boom was then lifted into position and the counterweight placed back into its original position on the stacker reclaimer.

A Liebherr LR 1600 crawler crane was used to remove the counterweight from the stacker reclaimer. The 180 t counterweight is made up of 18 concrete weights of 10 t each. This lift was accomplished by removing two 10 t weights at a time and was completed in nine separate lifts.

The new counterweight boom was positioned at the most appropriate and ideal lifting radius for the task at hand and, once the old boom had been lifted off, it was laid down alongside the new boom. The new 108 t boom was lifted into position using the same LR 1600 crane and then secured by the EMC Engineering team.

The final lift involved repositioning the counterweight by lifting one 10 t block of the counterweight on each lift. This was done using Johnson Crane Hire’s LTM 1300-1.

Simultaneously, Johnson Crane Hire undertook the second lift, the bucket wheel exchange for EMC Engineering. The old 30 t bucket wheel was removed using a LTM 1300-1 crane and a LTM 1095-5.1 crane. Once it had been lifted off the boom, a second crane – an LTM 1095-5.1 – was used to tail the large component until it was laid down safely.

Safety forms part of Johnson Crane Hire’s holistic lifting package, referred to as the ‘SMART’ (Safety, Maintenance, Availability, Reliability and Total cost effectiveness) philosophy.