Nearly 60 years after Grange Resources bought its first Cat® machine for its Tasmanian mine, the fleet is now over 50-strong and continuing to grow
For more than 55 years, Grange Resources has been at the very centre of Australia’s iron ore and pellet production sector, operating Tasmania’s Savage River mine.
Located 100km southwest of the port city of Burnie, on the north-west coast of Tasmania, the Savage River Mine has been producing some of the highest iron-concentrated magnetite in the country with minimal impurities since its inception.
The magnetite produced by Grange Resources at the Savage River mine is transported along an 85km pipeline to the company’s Port Latta pellet plant and port facility, before being exported as a raw material to make steel.
“We produce a very high-quality pelletised iron ore that is sent mostly overseas, but also used in Australia,” Savage River mine manager Matthew Anderson says.
“Our product is shipped to the big steel-making plants in Asian markets to be used as blast furnace feed.”
Backbone of the fleet
Key to the success of the Savage River operation has been a long-standing relationship with Caterpillar® and local dealer William Adams, which has supplied the majority of the mine’s heavy equipment fleet.
More than 50 Cat machines are in operation at the mine, including approximately 30 mining trucks, around 10 dozers, multiple graders and wheel loaders, and a couple of hydraulic mining shovels.
“Our newest Cat 789 mining trucks are high horsepower and show a significant improvement on speed on the road,” Anderson says.
Savage River has always operated Cat equipment, evidenced by some of the 20-year-old mining trucks still running today, with over 100,000 hours on the clock.
Grange Resources COO Ben Maynard says this achievement speaks to the reliability and durability of Caterpillar machinery.
“We’ve used the full suite of equipment, diggers, dozers, graders, trucks and excavators, and we really appreciate the conditions that the equipment has had to operate in, particularly the rugged environments of the West Coast of Tasmania,” he says.
“Rain, hail, snow, shine, in the wet, in the cold – that gear has been reliable and serviced us to deliver some high-quality concentrate and pellet.”
Another significant part of the mine’s success has been the close relationship with established Caterpillar OEM Solutions customer Elphinstone Group.
Also based in Tasmania, Elphinstone Group manufactures mining support vehicles, with all its products, technical assistance, support and access to spare parts available through William Adams.
Having provided Savage River with engineering support, electrical harnesses and bespoke solutions, such as mining truck trays, Maynard says he’s greatly appreciative of the relationship Grange Resources has with Elphinstone Group and William Adams.
“We’ve been able to partner together in delivering solutions and outcomes for our community and for our business, and that’s been a really important piece of our collaboration together,” he says.
“We appreciate the ability for our teams to maintain and look after that gear, and we appreciate the support we get from the local service teams to come apply that extra technical and specialised knowledge when we need it.
“Our relationship with Caterpillar, William Adams and the Elphinstone Group has been a really important one for our business over many years now.
“I reckon the relationship probably goes back about 57 years since the Savage River project has been in operation.”
Tech savvy
Beyond physical equipment, the application of Cat MineStar™ solutions has been integral to Grange Resources, with the integrated suite of technology offerings serving as an essential cog in the Savage River operation.
With everything from fleet management, guidance technologies and machine health applications to safety technologies and autonomous hauling capabilities, Cat MineStar solutions help to address the mine’s specific needs.
For Grange Resources, safety is of the upmost importance, and one solution that has enhanced this is Cat MineStar Command for Dozing – enabling remote operation of Savage River’s dozers.
This technology removes Savage River dozer operators from hazardous environments and instead allows them to safely control the machines from a remote operating station in the mine’s office.
“Cat Command for Dozing allows us to operate dozers in places that it would otherwise be unsafe to do, such as near unstable walls,” Anderson says.
“It means that we can operate higher tip heads or tip into water, while keeping the operators safe.”
In addition to the safety benefits, he says most operators at Savage River now prefer to stay in the remote operating station due to the enhanced comfort, rather than getting in the machine itself.
“Instead of bouncing around in a noisy and heavy dozer away from the rest of the team, they can operate from a remote quiet station near the break room,” Anderson adds.
To improve productivity, the Savage River mine has also adopted Cat MineStar Terrain, which uses high-precision guidance technologies and material tracking to ensure machines are working to plan.
“Cat MineStar Terrain shows us where all of our equipment is and gives us all the productivity metrics, including how much rock is on each truck, where they’re going to, what the material type is – if it’s ore or waste, what type of waste it is, and what dump it needs to go to,” Anderson says.
“It allows the supervisors to make good decisions as to how they deploy the fleet, to make it as productive and cost effective as possible.”
Maynard adds this technology has helped ensure the Savage River operation is maximising the payload on each Cat mining truck.
“At Grange Resources, we value safety, being efficient and productive with the equipment that we’ve got, and Caterpillar have really come to the party to help us think differently so we can make sure that we’re maximising the payload,” he says.
“The application of lightweight bodies on our trucks has really helped to ensure that we’re getting over 187 tonnes on every truck. That allows us to increase our payload, reduce our cost and improve our efficiency.”
Savage River has combined this solution with Cat MineStar Health, which has provided the mine with equipment data that can be monitored, such as critical machine parameters, real-time alerts, predictive failures and repair recommendations.
By having access to this information, the Savage River operation has been able to make more informed decisions to boost its productivity.
“The fact that we can remotely monitor machine health and the performance of the machines, such as the strut pressures, the gears that they’re in and the speed that they’re running, helps us to reintegrate that back into the design of our pits and makes our networks more effective and more productive,” Maynard says.
“This ensures we’re making that haul route safe for our operators, but also cost effective and productive.”
Invaluable partnership
Due to the remote locality of the Savage River mine, all servicing and maintenance of the Cat equipment is done on-site, including rebuilds with the support of William Adams.
This means having the right parts readily available is essential to reducing machine downtime.
“The logistics of getting parts to and from us is important to keep our reliability and our availability up where it needs to be,” Savage River mobile maintenance superintendent Allan Baxter says.
“We have a site key account manager, Craig Boatwright from William Adams, who works tirelessly with us all the time to ensure that we get what we need on time to help us ensure that our fleet is available to be able to create the production we need to hit our targets.”
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As Grange Resources approaches its sixth decade operating the Savage River mine, the company is looking at how it can unlock the future of the ore body onsite.
One of the options being explored is transitioning from an open cut operation to an underground mine, with the opportunity for a sub level cave and a block cave.
“There’s a real need for innovation as we look to decarbonise a 57-year-old operation,” Maynard says.
“We hope to halve our carbon emissions by 2030 and be Net Zero by 2035. We’re only going to get there with good people, good plans and good innovation, and that’s why we value this continued relationship with Caterpillar, William Adams and Elphinstone Group to help us adapt to the new challenges that we’re going to face.
“Congratulations to Caterpillar for reaching this amazing milestone of 100 years. We hope they have a great anniversary and a well-deserved celebration.
For more information, visit grangeresources.com.au and williamadams.com.au
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