HIGHWALL MINING
Gainwell ’ s highwall boom continues
Paul Moore reports that from its Asansol , West Bengal base , India ’ s Gainwell continues to grow its innovative highwall miner business , having supplied two machines now with a third one ready to ship and a fourth set for delivery by Q1 2022
Coal is still booming in India and highwall miners are a part of that to the point where one of the country ’ s leading Caterpillar dealers , Gainwell , is now making these machines under license from Caterpillar over four years after it discontinued the business . Recently , IM Editorial Director Paul Moore caught up with Jayanta Bhattacharya , Head of Manufacturing and Dipankar Banerjee , Chief Operating Officer , Mining Business , about further developments in the market .
The highwall miner is quite a unique product . Over 50 highwall mining machines are still working in the US , but very few elsewhere – a handful in Australia and India and some locally made machines in China such as a machine similar to the ADDCAR design made by CCTEG which is working in the Ordos Basin coal mines in Inner Mongolia .
As background , in 2017 Gainwell 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 and Russia . 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 Caterpillar it was now known as an HW300 and was also put into service with CBL .
Banerjee commented : " In India there were two mines using highwall technology successfully and we always sensed there is good potential here due to the high population density and a lot of open pits with highwalls under which there remained large tonnage of coal reserves .”
Gainwell supplied its first highwall miner to Coal India division Southeastern Coalfields ( SECL ) through CBL during February 2019 and the machine continues to deliver high
production rates using a low seam cutting module . SECL sister company Eastern Coalfields ( ECL ) then placed an order through CBL for a Gainwell Highwall Miner in 2020 . This has a low to mid-seam cutting module and is ready to go , with delivery to the customer due by end-August 2021 as IM went to press . On top of that , ECL has now ordered a second machine in July 2021 , set to be delivered in Q1 2022 , which will be equipped with a high seam cutting module .
The other existing highwall miner user in India , Tata Steel , also approached Gainwell wanting another machine which was duly
delivered in October 2020 . All the new Gainwell units have been given the name GHWM300M . The Tata Steel unit has been successfully commissioned and went into coal production with mining contractor Resurgent Mining Solutions from end-November onwards .
Gainwell has brought lot of improvements on this machine for Tata Steel including online diagnostics , complete operation through mobile application etc and the machine has also been performing very well . This was delivered with a low to mid-seam cutting module but has now also been supplied in 2021 with a high seam
cutting module to enable Tata to switch between
the two as needed . “ It is performing above expectations , production rates are higher than planned or anticipated ,” says Bhattacharya .
Summarising the remarkable turnaround for highwall mining in India – once the second ECL machine is delivered next year , ECL will have two Gainwell machines , SECL two machines ( one older Bucyrus and one new Gainwell machine ) and Tata one machine . So in total in Q1 2022 there will be no less than five large Highwall miners operating in India with three different customers .
And there is a lot of interest elsewhere – Banerjee told IM that it has active quotes out with coal mining companies in Australia , China and Russia and it fully expects at least one export order to be finalised by end-2021 . He added that a major expansion of the Asansol factory is now in advanced planning and in early 2022 construction will start – this will enable the manufacturing of three highwall miners at one time – so with a five to six month turnaround time it will enable six machines to be made per year in a single shift operation .
Bhattacharya also told IM earlier this year that it is trying to increase the indigenisation of the machine in India . In the first machine , it had only about 7 % Make-in-India content – by the second machine , this has risen to 28 % and was 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 . Of course there have been challenges like finding right people with the requisite skill sets such as in niche electronics engineering but we were able to attract the right people and get them trained .”
The company also pointed out that each highwall miner also has a high level of customisation depending on the options selected by the customer but also related to the seam thickness and geology it will be working with . This has led to the latest developments with supplying different types of cutting modules based on customer needs and requirements .
IM
50 International Mining | SEPTEMBER 2021