Driving Queensland’s resource future: McLanahan’s role in minerals expansion

As a global mineral and agricultural equipment manufacturer, McLanahan's recent collaboration with a leading mining company has become a key driver behind the expansion of a bauxite project in Queensland. This collaboration has been instrumental in enhancing production performance at a major mining operation in Queensland, increasing its bauxite project capacity to an impressive level.

McLanahan's innovative solutions, including the wobbler feeder and cross-belt sampling system, are at the heart of this success. They are engineered to efficiently and precisely tackle the specific challenges of bauxite processing.

Peter Bone, Regional Manager of Wet Processing at McLanahan, said, “McLanahan worked collaboratively with the mining company and its engineering partner to investigate solutions to improve the scalping of saleable bauxite from their run-of-mine feed."

“Bauxite is very sticky and highly cohesive. It tended to agglomerate as it passed over the existing vibrating screen, leading to low screening efficiencies and loss of saleable product to oversized reject material.”

McLanahan proposed utilising a wobbler feeder to tackle the mentioned challenges of bauxite. This equipment efficiently scalps material smaller than 3.5 inches (89 mm) from the feed, enabling direct shipment of the product while significantly reducing the volume of material requiring further processing.

Peter Bone added, "Bauxite tends to build up on surfaces such as feed and discharge chutes and agglomerates into larger lumps under its own mass."

“Every second wobbler bar cleans the adjacent bar, physically preventing the sticky product from building up.”

Image credit: https://www.mclanahan.com/