Web2Web – Condra

CRANES FOR TANKHOUSES

Web2Web — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The African market for tankhouse cranes is flourishing, with strong demand in a geographical band stretching from the Equator to the Tropic of Capricorn. For end users of this type of crane, the main concern remains the same – prompt and effective after sales service. Tankhouse cranes are double-girder electric travelling overhead machines that lift and position copper plates and slabs during electrolysis, the fourth and final step of the pyrometallurgical refining process used with certain types of copper ore. In this fourth step, anodic copper slabs which have already attained 99 percent purity during three prior processes are hung in large tanks filled with an electrolyte solution of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid. Small, thin sheets of pure copper are then suspended between these anodes and an electric current is applied. Positively charged copper ions leave the anodic slabs and move in solution through the electrolyte to place themselves on the cathodic sheets. After some weeks, the slabs have disappeared and the sheets have grown to become thick copper plates of 99,99 percent purity, ready for removal by the tankhouse cranes for rinsing and despatch to factories that produce copper wire, tubing and other products. One leading crane manufacturer, Condra, reports that tenders for as many as 30 tankhouse cranes are currently under evaluation. Eight are for mines in the Phalaborwa and Rustenburg areas of South Africa, and 22 are for the Central African Copperbelt – ten for mines in Zambia and twelve for the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Crane capacities are all around 5 tons, with a dual bottom-block system on each one to keep the sheets level while they are moved. The total value of all these tenders is some R120-million, tankhouse cranes being technically advanced machines priced at about R2,5-million each excluding cabins, air conditioning and the special ergonomics usually ordered as extras to cater for the very high crane speeds – about twice as fast as the average man can run. Previously, Condra has manufactured tankhouse cranes that include three double-girder overhead machines for the copper and cobalt leaching plants at the Ruashi Mine near Lubumbashi in the southern DRC, and an undisclosed number of machines for similar plants at a copper mine in Zambia. To achieve effective levels of production during electrolysis, Condra designs these cranes to achieve high long-travel speeds of between 100 and 140 metres per minute (the standard speed for overhead crane long-travel is around 30 metres per minute).

Typical Overhead Cranes under Manufacture in Condra’s Factory.

The company also keeps an eye on the corrosive nature of the tankhouse environment, offering a pressure test on crane girders in addition to the special paint specifications usually requested by the end user. Pressure applied internally to the girders allows weld seams to be checked for pinhole leaks, with a temporary application of liquid soap showing bubbling if seam integrity has been compromised. The test ensures protection against internal corrosion caused by corrosive fumes being sucked into the girder as it expands during the heat of the day. There must also be effective crane service and maintenance which, according to Condra, is lacking among European competitors because of the absence of local agents with spare parts holdings and a qualified service ability. Spare parts ordered from Europe can take up to two months to arrive. By contrast, Condra’s agent for the Copperbelt, Kitwe-based EC Mining, holds readily available stocks of spare parts and carries out machine maintenance at all installation sites. As an example of the problems that poor after sales service can cause, Condra points to a Copperbelt mine where spares and maintenance is no longer available for two cranes supplied by a northern hemisphere competitor. Condra is in talks with the management at this mine about converting the installed cranes to Condra standard so that they can be properly maintained. A similar situation at a Cape Town zinc plant recently resulted in three overhead cranes undergoing this type of conversion at Condra’s Germiston works, outside Johannesburg, to facilitate effective maintenance into the future.

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CRANES AT MOPANI PASS R100-MILLION MARK

Web2Web — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A shipment of lifting equipment despatched in late August to Mopani Copper Mines has taken Condra’s order intake from this company to more than R100-million. Zambia-based Mopani placed its first order on Condra in 2012. Comprising one electric travelling overhead crane, 38 hoists, two large and seven smaller jib cranes, the shipment is earmarked for various applications within the Mufulira and Nkana mines, and left Condra’s Germiston factory by road.

Typical Condra Jib Crane

Work will now begin on six further single- and double-girder overhead cranes for Nkana’s synclinorium shaft, and for the concentrator plants at both mines. Crane capacities will be between 5 tons and 10 tons, with standard lifting heights and spans of between 15 metres and 18 metres. Condra expects to receive additional orders for as many as nine further cranes while these six are on the factory floor. Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) operates the Mufulira mine, smelter, concentrator and copper refinery on the outskirts of Mufulira, and the Nkana mine, concentrator and cobalt plant near Kitwe, both towns situated on the Copperbelt in central Zambia. Condra’s deliveries to MCM are ongoing. Three years ago, the company delivered two 25-ton headgear cranes to the synclinorium shaft at Nkana mine, and two 70-ton maintenance cranes for the winderhouse, the latter designed with very high lifts of over 80 metres each. The company has manufactured several other overhead and high-lift machines for Mopani since its first delivery in 2012, and regularly supplies hoists in quantity. Underpinning this successful relationship between customer and supplier is Condra’s very tight focus on product quality and reliability. Manufacture is carried out to the ISO 9000 and GOST standards, and the company additionally complies with the environmental and health and safety standards of ISO 14000 and ISO 18000.

Crab-Mounted Condra Hoist

Cranes are custom designed and assembled from hoists, drives, end‑carriages, brakes, gearboxes and some 250 other sub-assemblies all manufactured by Condra. Two hoist product lines are manufactured in a number of standard models suited to most mining and industrial applications, from 1 to 500 tons. Motors are bought from external suppliers in Germany. The company offers transport, installation and commissioning as complementary services. Commenting on the clutch of recent orders from Mopani Copper Mines, Condra’s managing director Marc Kleiner said that this customer had named reliability and prompt service as the main reasons for awarding the contracts to Condra. Service for Zambia’s Copperbelt is supplied by Kitwe-based agent EC Mining, which holds stocks of Condra spares. Kleiner explained that his company’s northern hemisphere competitors generally suffered from the handicap of long lead times on spares ordered from factories based abroad. “Mining companies need effective production levels, and this productivity is dependent on the reliability of all mining machinery and lifting equipment. “It is a fact that the ability of some of our competitors to respond to needs and realities of lifting equipment customers on the African continent lags behind that of Condra,” Kleiner said. Of the shipment just despatched to Mopani Copper Mines, high lifts of 30 metres on some of the hoists were exceeded by a very high lift of 48 metres on one of the jib cranes. Walkways on the overhead crane were completed with steel grating in place of the normal chequer plate, and weld seams on all machines were inspected for quality and integrity to counter the harsh, corrosive environment characteristic of Copperbelt mining. Protective paint finishes in light green were applied to customer specification.

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CRANE TECHNOLOGY WILL SLASH MINESHAFT PRE-SINK TIME

Web2Web — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The world’s fifth largest mine, Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, will use advanced techniques enabled by pioneering crane design to fast-track the pre-sink phase at Shaft 6. The time needed will be dramatically reduced by a Condra portal crane that combines a very rapid lift speed with optimised cross travel to waiting dump trucks. Pre-sinking is expected to be completed in less than a quarter of the time considered the norm – four months instead of the usual eighteen. The Condra portal is radically different from the level-luffing type of crane traditionally used for pre‑sinking. Instead, a high-speed, high-lift main hoist removes excavated spoil vertically, by kibble, through an opening in the centre of a drilling stage positioned by two separate stage‑winders mounted on the same portal frame. Lift speed is an impressive 1 metre per second – fifteen times faster than the 4 metres per minute found in standard mine workshop applications. South Africa-based Condra researched its advanced portal design during 2013 for incorporation in a prototype machine used at a new diamond mining shaft the following year. In addition to an innovative frame design and dramatically increased lift speed on the main hoist, the portal crane also incorporated improved drives, gearboxes and safety devices, better cabin access and enhanced operation by remote control. Oyu Tolgoi Shaft 6 will have two of these Condra portal machines. During the pre-sink phase, they will stand over the mouths of the main and auxiliary rescue shafts, and remain in place until the shafts have been drilled, blasted, supported, cleaned and lined with concrete. Oyu Tolgoi is a combined open pit and underground mining project located some 550km south of Monglia’s capital, Ulaanbataar, within the Gobi Desert. The mine, still under development by Rio Tinto, began producing copper and gold concentrate in 2013. It is the largest mining project in Mongolia’s history. Condra began manufacture of the first of the portals for Oyu Tolgoi in early July, when the long-lead assemblies order was received. The main order was received on July 24^th. Oyu Tolgoi’s pre-sink cranes will be bigger and faster than the diamond mining machine, and will feature improved electronics. Importantly, lifting speed of the 160kW 15-ton main hoist on the new portals will double to 60 metres per minute.

Mongolia – Customised portal crane at diamond mine

The portal frame itself will comprise a 14-metre high, 12-metre span extended by 3,2-metre cantilevers on both sides to allow excavated spoil to be moved to dump trucks using roads adjacent to the shaft. Stairwells will replace the cat ladders of the diamond mine portal. Below-ground lift height will be 100 metres, and the complete machine will weigh 88 tons. Completion of both cranes, the design of which makes provision for disassembly and containerisation, is scheduled for early November this year. They will be shipped to Mongolia via China.

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BULGARIAN SUBSIDIARY GROWS EUROPEAN MARKET SHARE

Web2Web — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Condra Bulgaria Ltd, fledgling European subsidiary of South African crane manufacturer Condra, has received orders worth some €½-million in the past six months, and secured further contracts for the ongoing supply of end-carriages to crane manufacturers in England and Spain. The subsidiary’s latest order comprises components for a 10-ton overhead travelling crane recently delivered to a Russian company, where customer support is being supplied by Energoprofit Moscow, Condra’s newly appointed agent in that country. These successes are independent of orders worth several million Euros placed by Russian companies directly with the South African parent in recent years. It was to bring manufacturing capabilities closer to the Russian market that the Bulgarian subsidiary was established, while Energoprofit Moscow has now been appointed to deliver technical support and after sales service directly to the heart of that country. The latent potential in Russia’s lifting equipment market was identified by Condra as far back as 2000, but it posed the twin obstacles of widespread Russian scepticism of any and all capital equipment of African manufacture, and an ingrained confidence in traditional supply from Poland and Bulgaria, designated suppliers of lifting equipment to the former USSR. When Bulgaria entered the European Economic Community in 2007, legislated acceptance of foreign subsidiary companies paved the way for establishing a subsidiary in Pazardzhik, an industrial town outside the country’s second city of Plovdiv with an acceptable national address. This took place in 2008 and, combined with Condra’s German origins and connections, it provided the correct platform from which to address Russia, employing skilled staff from the pool of artisans left underemployed by a Bulgarian crane industry much troubled after the opening up of the region to global competition. Participation in a Plovdiv exposition in 2010, and in two expositions in Moscow in 2011, resulted in the subsidiary’s first orders as well as a working relationship with the Russian NGO Vniiptmash.

Cranes under manufacture in Condra’s Johannesburg factory

The installation of Condra overhead cranes at Kazakhstan’s Varvarinskoye gold mine afforded potential Russian customers the opportunity to visit working examples of the company’s capabilities, and orders from Vniiptmash followed soon afterward; first the components needed for two 100/20/5-ton cranes, then four complete machines: two 90/20-ton machines and two 38-metre span 70/12,5/5-ton double girder electric overhead travelling cranes. The combined value of these four cranes was just short of €3-million, though this number was excluded from Bulgarian sales figures on account of manufacture being executed in the South African factory to meet the exacting demands of machine complexity that included lift heights of 28 metres and lift speeds of up to 12 metres per minute. The next step was for Condra Bulgaria to seek out a foundry ahead of the start of local production. A working relationship was established with the Tisina foundry in Dryanovo, which in turn led to a partnership between the two companies and the construction in 2015 of a production facility of some 3000m² in Gabrovo. Early last year, Condra Bulgaria moved from Pazardzhik to Gabrovo, with Nicolai Dyankov, Tisina’s owner, heading up the company as managing director. By December 2017, the Gabrovo operation had already supplied four double girder electric overhead travelling cranes to Bulgarian veterinary supplies giant Biovet, with capacities ranging from 3,2 tons to 25 tons and spans of between 14 metres and 30 metres, and these successes were quickly followed by orders taken early in 2018 for four 18-metre span single girder machines with capacities of 3 tons, 5 tons (two of) and 8 tons. Asked to comment on the subsidiary company’s achievements to date, Nicolai Dyankov said that the drive for Russian market share would be helped by the certifiably lower overall lifetime costs offered by the Condra product. He pointed to examples of cost-lowering product improvements such as the use of live-axle drives in place of ring-gear designs, and the introduction of adapted V-belt technology already tested and proven in the motor vehicle industry. “Component manufacture in South Africa has for several years made use of high quality materials, such as a 36B case-hardened material on most pinions,” he said. “This is an expensive material, but it is beneficial in extending crane lifespan. “A further example can be found in the high tensile-strength ropes fitted to hoists. These have a smaller rope diameter, which enables use of a reduced drum diameter and a more compact gearbox and motor, all of which help contain costs. “These benefits are now available to the European market through Condra Bulgaria, where I believe they will contribute to a sustainable competitive advantage into the future,” Dyankov concluded.

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WORLDWIDE ORDERS MAKE FOR BULLISH MOOD

Web2Web — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Condra has received an order for a further overhead crane from Kamoto Copper Company, the copper and cobalt mine in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is the eighth machine to be ordered by Kamoto Copper from Johannesburg-headquartered Condra in just over a year and, like its predecessors, is earmarked for workshop duty in the ongoing development and expansion of the mine being overseen by Senet consulting engineers. Kolwezi Lifting Solutions, Condra’s authorised agent for the DRC, is managing crane installation and servicing, and Kamoto Copper Company has additionally ordered spares worth R1,5-million to facilitate this. These spares will also be used to maintain the existing large installed base of Condra hoists.

Three overhead cranes (finished in yellow) for Kamoto Copper Company,
nearing completion in Condra’s Johannesburg factory.

Kamoto Copper’s new crane will be a 3-ton, 9-metre span, single-girder workshop crane with a five-metre lift. Its seven predecessors include a 10-ton double-girder overhead crusher maintenance crane with a 20‑metre span and a very high lift of 19 metres, which added to Condra’s reputation as Africa’s acknowledged leader in the design and manufacture of these specialised high-lift machines. The six remaining cranes comprise two 3-ton, 9-metre span machines and four 3,2‑ton, 17-metre span single-girder electric overhead travelling cranes, the latter completed on schedule in April of this year despite a very short lead time of less than two months. All these machines have short lift heights of about 4 metres. Total value of the eight cranes together is some R6-million. Recognising the need for rapid and effective service at Kamoto Copper Company, Condra appointed Kolwezi Lifting Solutions at the beginning of 2017. The relationship between management at the two companies stretches back decades. Asked to comment on its DRC agent, Condra’s managing director Marc Kleiner said that rival crane suppliers in Africa do not have agencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “Ours is the only one, so this gives us a competitive advantage in terms of the best and most cost-effective service, and the quickest response times to Kamoto Copper and our other customers in that country,” said Kleiner.

Condra’s managing director, Marc Kleiner.

Kleiner said that Kolwezi Lifting Solutions consistently delivered all the necessary agency benefits expected by crane customers. “At the moment we have other formalised agencies in Zambia, Namibia, Kenya and Botswana, and our qualified technicians based in Zambia, in Kitwe, travel to the DRC and Tanzania when needed,” he explained. “But we would of course ideally like technicians based in other African countries as well, and we are currently establishing service relationships with representatives in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Angola with a view to formally appointing agents in those countries as soon as possible.” The eight cranes ordered by Kamoto Copper Mine all feature motors and control panel enclosures built to IP65 standard to allow for periodic hosing down of the workshops. There are also solid brass rope guide nuts on the rope drums, travel warning lights and sirens, and rail sweeps on all machines to counter the dusty environment. Condra fitted striker limit switches to the horizontal travels as well to the hoists, and applied a special paint finish to cope with the demands of a generally aggressive working environment. Exposed galvanised iron parts were also entirely excluded from one of the machines because of the acidic environment in which it has to work. Unpainted brake plates, nuts, bolts, C-track systems and other exposed parts on this crane were all made either from stainless steel or aluminium. Kleiner said that he expected the flow of orders from sub-Saharan Africa to continue to increase. “We are building a new workshop in Cape Town with easier port accessibility to allow us to ship further up the African coast from there, in preparation for the increase in business which we anticipate. “Our Bulgarian, South American and Canadian operations are also expanding steadily. “The general mood here at Condra is bullish,” Kleiner concluded.

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Condra is increasing its exports of hoists

Web2Web — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The installation and commissioning of a 70/12.5/5-ton 37.2-metre span crane at the gas turbine power station in Perm, Russia, was recently completed. Condra is making its presence felt in Russia, with a stand at the Mining Trade Show in Moscow resulting in orders for a further 90/20-ton components with a span of 16.2 metres, ordered by Miheevsk Copper Mine. Furthermore, 2 x sets of 100/20/5 ton components were used to build two 37.2m span cranes at gas power station in Nijniy Turinsk. In Africa, a first-of-its-kind mine portal design has just been developed to fast-track the pre-sink phase of new mineshafts. This crane makes possible a period of just three months for a typical 50 metre mineshaft pre-sink. In North America, Condra is increasing its exports of hoists, cranes and spares to Canada, while in South America, sales of cranes with capacities between 40-ton and 60-ton continue at a steady pace.

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