Providing market-leading solutions for Mineral Resources (MinRes) and select external tier one mining clients, the facility is a leader in repairs, refurbishment and new builds of buckets, booms, sticks, dump truck trays and water carts.
The Hazelmere workshop works in collaboration with the Kwinana workshop and joined the MinRes business following its acquisition of G&G Mining.
Driving this innovation forward is the on-site engineering team of four staff, headed up Deon Wessels, who says the workshop provides a significant competitive advantage.
“At the heart of what we do is to analyse and better understand the failure modes and wear characteristics of the attachments coming back from our mine sites for repair and then innovatively develop something new to help our products perform better,” Deon explained.
“The thing that sets us apart is our ability to design something, test it in-house, on our sites and make improvements – it’s a continuous cycle of learning and improvement from the data we receive.
“We identify any shortcomings in the product and take the voice of the customer to align our strategies and help them improve productivity.
“Ultimately, we provide technical support to sites, workshops and external customers to ensure the asset meets the KPIs.”
Those improvements have been on show at Onslow Iron’s Ken’s Bore mine, with the engineering team designing and developing a bucket for Hitachi EX3600 excavators that increases payload and reduces maintenance.
Creatively, the team developed a 22m3 bucket, delivering a 12% increase in payload, while focusing on reducing fabrication and refurbishment costs.
Additionally, maintenance intensive components were removed, keeping within the same target weight.
Similar thinking has been applied to mining at CSI’s client sites thanks to the development of a lined bucket to reduce hangup, which is on trial in Queensland.
Innovative thinking has also been on display in the dump truck realm, with the team developing a new tray for the Komatsu HD1500 that will feature a skeleton structure which can be used for 60,000 hours and boasts a replaceable floor tailored for the application.
“I’m incredibly proud of what our team has developed over the years,” Deon said.
“These ideas, of course, wouldn’t come to life without the significant expertise on the workshop floor – we have more than 80 staff based at Hazelmere and everyone plays their role in driving innovation and capability.”
“It’s pleasing to see our innovative designs and developments having tangible impacts in our mining operations to drive better outcomes for the teams on-site.”
Learn more about CSI Mining Services workshops and or refer to its Workshops Capability Statement.
