Modern Mining May 2017

feature CRUSHING, SCREENING AND MILLING

B&E provides short or long term With over 40 years of experience in mobile and static crushing plants, Raubex company B&E International is known for its range of reliable interventions – from a stop- gap mobile plant in an emergency to a long term crushing solution on the mine site.

A ccording to B&E International Managing Director Dewald Janse van Rensburg, it is often the company’s capacity to respond quickly to a dire need that leads to a partnership that endures for decades. “We can go to a mine at very short notice to assist them when, for instance, they experience a jaw crusher or secondary crusher failure that brings production to a standstill,” says Janse van Rensburg. “We can move onto site quickly with a very large mobile crusher and keep pro- duction going for the weeks or months that it takes for a mine to get their own equipment back into operation.” B&E International’s ability to do this is based not only on its engineering capability – it designs, manufactures, commissions and maintains crushing and washing plants for external mining projects – but on its experience of actually running these operations on behalf of clients. “What distinguishes us from other design and engineering houses is that crushing and screening is our business,” he says. “This is what we do every day on the infrastructure side of our operations, where we undertake contracts using our own mobile or static plants, crushing for large construction projects.” So successful were the company’s initial operations from 1972 in blasting and excavating that it expanded into crushing and screening a few years later, and entered the mining services sector in 1993. “We diversified into bulk mining, process- ing and beneficiation of minerals, although we do leave the final recovery stages to the experts in the mining companies themselves,” he says. “Our customers include South Africa’s largest mining companies, and we mine about 22 million tonnes a year currently, while also crushing, screening and processing about 12 million tonnes a year of ore and aggregates.” Janse van Rensburg emphasises how the first, short term contracts with many customers have led to ongoing partnerships. “We always start with assessing exactly

what is required, before making our propos- als, so that we can design a plant that will meet expectations,” he says. “While ensuring the appropriate specifications for the output needed, we are also very familiar with what the practical maintenance requirements are going to be and we design to make access easier and maintenance quicker. This is just part of the value to the customer that comes from running our own plants.” B&E International’s rare combination of engi- neering capability and operational experience even allows it to assume some of the start-up risk faced by new mines, by designing a plant and running it on a ‘toll’ basis for a customer. “For a new mining operation that is just starting up and which may not be able to fully fund all its facilities, we can design and actually run the plant on a ‘tonnage rate’ for an agreed period of time,” says Janse van Rensburg. “The plant’s efficient operation for, say, six to twelve months will prove to the mine that the plant can deliver in terms of the parameters required and the mine can decide on whether and when to take ownership based on how its cash flow improves.” The customer essentially pays for the amount of material processed, without having to pay

32  MODERN MINING  May 2017