Modern Mining March 2020

most important pillars of our ‘engineered for ton- nage’ philosophy,” she says. Fit-for-purpose manufacturing With uptime in mind, reliability of vibrating screens is key. Reliable vibrating screen designs are depen- dent on the proper marriage of the manufacturer’s

capabilities and the understanding of requirements of the design. It is for this reason that Kwatani doesn’t offer catalogue sales for its vibrating screens; every unit is customised to meet the unique operational requirements. “The in-house design expertise gives us the abil- ity to customise a piece of equipment to the needs at hand. Our knowledge base stems from a mechani- cal metallurgy expertise. We have to understand how our equipment integrates into the mine’s processes and how it impacts the upstream and downstream processes,” says Schoepflin. She adds that Kwatani’s engineers and metallur- gists engage the customer to understand what the customer is trying to achieve in terms of their appli- cation, what is the ore like and how it behaves, as well as where the vibrating screen will go, because more often these units are supplied on brownfields projects. “It’s not always new plants. New plants are few and far between. We see a lot of improvement projects, plant optimisation, increasing life of mine and brownfield expansions. So we need to under- stand where the equipment will fit in the existing infrastructure,” says Schoepflin. “It’s about working through each case through the eyes of a consultant; analyse the condition of exist- ing equipment, the customer’s requirements and the infrastructure. That incorporates the design with the most cost-effective solution,” says Schoepflin, adding that it is pointless to offer a screen that may give better processing efficiency, but not fitting into the existing infrastructure or requires massive plant modification. She reasons that a plant modification can actually

A completed Kwatani scalper screen in the workshop at Kwatani hoisted and ready to be loaded.

March 2020  MODERN MINING  29