HIGH PROFILE
Uwe Restner, Vice President – Product Line Management Underground Continuous Mining( photo: Adam Lach)
“ We see a significant opportunity in the coal market to leverage our existing and future portfolio of bolter miners, continuous miners and roadheaders,” he said.“ The market is calling out for partners offering long-term support that goes beyond replacement parts, to companies that have longer-term technology strategies to make operations safer, more productive and more profitable.”
Speaking to Vallant and his team and seeing the plans for the revamped Zeltweg Final Assembly facility and offices – expected to be realised in late 2026 – it became obvious that the division is looking to partner for the long term.
“ We’ re seeing more customers coming to us with strategic requests and ideas of partnering to achieve their long-term aims,” he added.
This is most abundantly clear on the hard-rock cutting side and the BHP Jansen example( more on that later), but Vallant’ s colleague, Uwe Restner, Vice President – Product Line Management Underground Continuous Mining, also talked through how Sandvik is working with coal clients on bringing bolting operations closer to that fully-autonomous process goal.
“ In order to progress from what we are now able to offer with the MB672 and fully-automated bolting options, we need to work with customers on devising new flexible types of supportive mesh that can be fitted onto machines to move away from the current manual process,” he explained.“ This may require the market to overcome the change resistance against the use of plastic mesh stored on mesh rolls, as well as the use of new rock bolt types.”
The latter will certainly be helped by the recent incorporation of DSI into the adjacent Sandvik Ground Support division.
The development of new machines will also aid these customer-focused goals and
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Restner displayed plenty of planned additions to the line-up during IM’ s visit. This includes a new low-seam MB672 bolter miner( set to be called the MB672 LH), and new continuous miners – some of which have already been introduced with the madein-India Sandvik MC350 and the Sandvik MC351( recently displayed at a coal show in the US).
“ There is clearly an opening in certain market segments where one of the big manufacturers is perceived to be taking a step back from supporting coal operations,” Vallant said.“ We intend to make inroads in these markets where it makes sense.”
The Zeltweg Final Assembly line showcased this with the first Sandvik MC431 continuous miner set to operate in Australia being assembled at the time of IM’ s visit( pictured below). A recent continuous miner sale to the US has also been celebrated, with the division seeing massive potential for claiming a greater share of sales in that room & pillar mining market.
( Photo: Adam Lach)
In China, specifically, the division is well on the way to establishing the bolter miner as an industry standard, with more than 100 of these units operating in the Asian nation alone.
Jansen developments
Beyond coal, the Mechanical Cutting division has plenty of potential avenues to expand.
There was much discussion in Zeltweg about the continuous miner systems developed for the BHP-owned Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Vallant went all the way back to December 2008 to the first kick-off meeting between the miner and supplier to chart the history of this project, while looking forward to the start-up of the first unit next year.
Each mining system included in this project consists of a cable-powered Sandvik MF460 borer miner and a Sandvik PO140 extendable conveyor. The Sandvik MF460s will cut widths of 6.3 m and heights of up to 4.36 m per cut, with one cut and return cut up to 2 km in length to leave a circa 12 m-wide room. Each integrated system can produce around 1,300-1,500 t / h, according to the OEM.
BHP commissioned Sandvik to carry out the engineering design of the Sandvik MF460 from 2010 to 2012. With the borer miner’ s high-volume production creating a materials handling challenge, BHP also commissioned Sandvik to concept design and test the Sandvik PO140 in 2014.
Following successful testing, BHP and
Sandvik signed a manufacturing and testing agreement for one Sandvik MF460 and one Sandvik PO140 in 2016. The complete system proved highly productive during tests at SWS( Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG) salt mine in Germany from 2018 to 2021, doubling the industry benchmark
International Mining | JANUARY 2026