Mining News Agency- At its Investor Seminar in Sydney on December 4, Alf Barrios, Rio Tinto Chief Executive, Aluminium talked about the creation of the Bauxite Integrated Operations Centre at Weipa in 2017, that will coordinate the Weipa, Amrun and Gove operations. The group is making systems enhancements across these mines, enabling a major step-up in asset productivity.
Mining News - “This state-of-the-art facility, leveraging learnings from iron ore, monitors performance of the entire bauxite system. This allows us to operate as a global business with 24/7 monitoring of all safety, production and quality aspects, enabling real-time decision making, optimisation across the operations, and dynamic asset health management to unlock full potential. The Operations Centre is also enhancing our integrated processes across the value chain to optimise bauxite mix to allow for best delivery of value-in-use to our customers, internally and externally, in turn maximising margins. These processes, which involve our sales, technical marketing and operational teams, lead to a frequent optimisation of our mine plans based on our customer needs and willingness to pay, where we prioritise value over volume.”
He adds on some specifics: “Another example of how we are debottlenecking our Weipa operations is the dynamic payload management on our haul truck fleet. We are equipping our entire fleet with strain gauges to allow for real-time measurement of truck payload. This constant monitoring, together with the trailer capacity increase across the entire Weipa fleet, will help us increase our payload by 11% over the next 12 months. We will further drive value next year by debottlenecking our rail system, optimising speeds, which have increased from 60 to 65 km/h throughout this year, and increasing payload by 5% per wagon, leveraging best practice from iron ore.
Another example we are exploring as we face longer hauling distances at Andoom is the introduction of road trains which allow for an increase of payload, higher average speeds, and better tyre performance. These road trains have been successfully deployed across some of our coal and salt operations and we will now pilot them with a view also to investigating automation. And at Gove, we have put in place an ambitious program to upgrade drives, chutes and belt speeds, leveraging Rio Tinto’s asset management capabilities with G&I. Through this program we will continue to increase the overland rate.
In the past decade, Rio has already been successful in ramping up production at its core bauxite operations. “Our bauxite mines have a strong track record of productivity over the past 10 years.
At Weipa, we have increased production by 6% per annum and by 8% per annum at Gove. This has been achieved with virtually no capital investment, just by leveraging best practice from other mines, optimising mine plans and optimising existing infrastructure. At our Andoom mine in Weipa we have crept production from 14 Mt in 2012 to 18 Mt this year, through enhancements in the beneficiation plant and rail system. At Gove, the mine was producing 8 Mt at the time of refinery curtailment in early 2014.
The successful ramp-up of bauxite exports to 11 Mt has been driven by productivity improvements. This includes a 2 Mt increase in 2017 through an ongoing focus on the reliability of the overland conveyor system, drawing on Rio Tinto’s expertise.
Amrun will be a step-change in our bauxite business with the project on track for first shipment in first half 2019. We continue to develop options for further creep and growth projects in Cape York and at CBG in Guinea to capture market growth.”