Leveraging its quality brands of screens and crushers, Weir Minerals Africa has the in-house capacity to design and build complete plants for customers – cost effectively and quickly.

This has proved very valuable to customers wanting to rapidly ramp up their production in light of rising commodity prices in recent years, according to Weir Minerals Africa Product Manager for Comminution Theo Hendricks. With much of each plant’s equipment available ex-stock, and some even locally manufactured, the lead times for these plants can be considerably reduced.

“These tend to be process plants on the smaller side of the size spectrum, up to about 500 tonnes per hour capacity,” says Hendricks. “Designed in a modular format, these are fitted with any combination of our well-known Trio jaw and cone crushers, Trio feeders and Enduron vibrating screens.”

The turnkey approach includes providing all the structures for the equipment, and the conveyors to move material between different sections of the plant. Weir Minerals Africa Advanced Applications Engineer Karabo Moalamedi emphasises that best practice is applied in all aspects of the engineering and design. This ensures safety, performance and easy access for regular maintenance.

At the front end of the plant is the primary station – which usually includes a ROM hopper, a Trio® vibrating grizzly feeder, a Trio® jaw crusher and Enduron® screen. Where the material has a high clay or moisture content, a Trio® apron feeder is recommended. At the secondary crushing stage, a combination of Trio® cone crushers and Enduron® screens are usually installed, while Enduron® HPGRs are also included in the tertiary phase where finer material is required.

To accurately plan the design and location in existing facilities, 3D scanning is used to plot where infrastructure is already in place, says Moalamedi. The plant design itself can also be rendered in 3D, showing the customer and design team a detailed visualisation to guide final decision-making.

The plant is trial-erected at Weir Minerals Africa’s facility before being shipped to site, and its specialist technicians will supervise the on-site installation and commissioning. Ongoing technical support is then available from Weir Minerals Africa’s extensive branch network around the continent.