SCREENING screen, so it has been creeping along year after year. Mining operations are under constant pressure to process more material and improve their availability while at the same time reducing their operating costs, but still maintaining the highest safety standards, often with very constrained footprints.”
He says the solution means assessing the geometry, material specification and hardness to select the right media for that application, then balancing that healthy friction between process efficiency and maintainability,“ because there’ s always those two aspects on any site. Maintenance and reliability remain critical because unplanned downtime on a screen can quickly affect the performance of the entire plant, realistically.”
Shepherd adds:“ Customers are looking for longer wear, easier access for inspection and replacement, like faster change outs, and designs that reduce exposure to things like manual handling and high-risk maintenance tasks, to keep people safer, but also energy efficiency, strong aftermarket support, access to the right screen media and local capability. So the challenge is no longer simply about supplying a screen that separates material effectively or efficiently. It’ s about delivering a complete screening solution that improves things like uptime, maintenance safety, and of course optimised process performance over the entire life of the asset.”
One of the more visible trends FLS is still seeing is moving towards larger high capacity screens.“ We’ re up to 4.8 m by 9.8 m double deck screens now with our large screens. These have very big drive systems on them and are being deployed both in greenfield sites as well as brownfield operations where customers
FLS recently highlighted its ACE PanelScan™ Rover at Electra Mining Africa 2026
are trying to increase production without having to change too much of their plant footprint. Banana screens and multi-slope designs continue to play a very important role because they can provide much more higher capacity, in a relatively compact area compared to low head or flat deck
type designs, while still supporting strong screening efficiency when correctly applied.”
Shepherd added that screens are also increasingly being selected around the flowsheet, rather than being treated as a standalone piece of equipment.“ In the past, the crushers or mills were the main focus of early equipment selection when operators and EPCMs were looking at initial flowsheet selection, with screens often a later decision. Today – with many mines looking at HPGR circuits plus things like finer separation and coarse particle flotation, and in some cases dealing with more complex orebodies, screen selection and media design are now considered critical, as in some of these future flowsheet applications, the screen has a direct impact on downstream efficiency and recovery, as well as energy consumption. An HPGR, as an example, is only as good as the screen.”
There is also much more application specificity. FLS says customers are wanting solutions that are engineered for their specific duty, but also supported over time rather than just a one-size-fits-all type
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