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THE LEADER
Make in India
Now and again a truly remarkable story comes
around in mining technology and what has happened with highwall miners in India is certainly one of them . At the end of 2016 , Caterpillar had announced that it would stop making new room and pillar products , including closing its Houston , Pennsylvania factory , saying that a major reason was the concentration of demand in the Appalachian Mountain region of the US which was a slowly declining market . The discontinued business included continuous miners , coal utility vehicles , feeder breakers , roof bolters and haulage systems , but also highwall miners .
But in other parts of the world , coal is booming , including India where it still accounts for almost 70 % of power generation plus feeding a major steel and cement industry . Gainwell is a major Caterpillar dealer in the country and Dipankar Banerjee , Chief Operating Officer , Mining Business at the company says that in 2017 it approached Caterpillar saying that it had opportunities in India and would be interested in a technology licensing agreement given that new machine production had ended in the US . After a period of discussions this was signed in 2018 allowing the manufacture of highwall miners in India by Gainwell . The IP licensing included India and select overseas markets including China . Gainwell then invested in a new assembly shop in Asansol , near Kolkata in West Bengal in the heart of India ’ s coal mining belt and made the first machine in 2019 .
The two existing highwall miners in India had been supplied as follows : one by Bucyrus ( SHM unit ) in the early 2010s just before Bucyrus was bought by Cat in 2011 to SECL ’ s Sharda opencast mine ( operated by contractor Cuprum Bagrodia Ltd or CBL ) and the second in 2015 / 2016 to Tata Steel for its West Bokaro Division South Eastern Quarry . As that machine was supplied by Cat it was now known as an HWM300 and this too was operated by contractor CBL .
Gainwell supplied its first highwall miner to SECL through CBL during February 2019 and the machine is working very well . The customer in fact has placed another order for second Gainwell Highwall Miner to be delivered in 2021 . So the customer will now have four highwall miners , one Bucryus , one Cat and two new units from Gainwell . At the same time , the other existing highwall miner user in India , Tata Steel , approached Gainwell wanting another machine which was duly delivered in October 2020 . All the new Gainwell units have been given the name GHWM300 . The Tata Steel unit has been successfully commissioned and went into coal production from end-November onwards . Gainwell has brought lot of improvements on this machine including online diagnostics , complete operation through mobile application etc and the machine has been performing very well .
As well investing in machining and other equipment , Gainwell has invested in a core design and engineering team at Asansol led by Head of Manufacturing , Jayanta Bhattacharya , as well as employing on a consultancy basis several former
VOLUME 16 • NUMBER2
Bucyrus / Caterpillar engineers who had worked on the SHM machines in the US . Bhattacharya told IM : “ This really eased the manufacturing journey for us . We are primarily a Cat dealer , selling and servicing its equipment for the past 75 years . But we learned quickly and today we are quite self-sufficient . We buy the components and parts from Cat made by them and their network of third party suppliers which they are still making to support the installed population of highwall miners in the US .”
He adds : “ Slowly we are trying to increase the indigenisation of the machine in India . In the first machine , we had only about 7 % Make-in-India content – by the second machine , this has risen to 28 % and will be higher again for the third machine . Local manufacturing has really got strengthened in India in recent years with the growth of the domestic automobile industry and there are very good vendor base getting developed . All the testing of the equipment is also done in-house . Cat really helped us in the early days in handholding us but we are now becoming a world class manufacturer in our own right ."
For promotion in China , Gainwell has already attended a trade show in the country in 2020 and says it would already have had a machine in the country in 2020 if it were not for the effect of COVID- 19 . The company is working together with North China and Eastern Central Cat dealer Lei Shing Hong ( LSH ) Machinery and expects the first Chinese order to now come through in 2021 . Banerjee says : “ LSH will promote the equipment , as well as provide necessary service and parts support for the highwall miner . This is quite a unique arrangement between two major Cat dealers in two different countries with one acting as OEM and the other as a dealer . Gainwell is also in discussions with few other Cat dealers about similar arrangements to promote the Gainwell Highwall Miner in those respective markets .”
Gainwell says its Asansol site can make up to two highwall miners a year with the broad plan to supply one domestically and one for export on an annual basis . But if demand exceeds that , the company says that with three instead of two shifts and cutting down on some of the cycle times etc it could up this to three machines if needed . The assembly is modular and there is room at the site to expand the plant footprint as well . The company also says it will invest in 2021 in new machining equipment .
The growth of this highwall miner business within India is a real testament to Gainwell ’ s vision and confidence as it involves manufacture of a high value , complex mining machine domestically and it has the full support of the Indian Government as well as from Coal India .
Paul Moore Editorial Director paul @ im-mining . com
FEBRUARY 2021 | International Mining 3