AFRICA NEWS
2018,” says Naicker. “Vernon has been
servicing Andru Mining for many years
and we had no hesitation in tasking him
with our order.”
Of the 34 B40E ADTs, 10 were fitted
with the newly designed Bell coal bin,
which allows the truck to easily fulfil its
design capacity of carrying between 36
and 39 tonnes of raw coal.
“As a proudly South African
company supporting local content, we
experienced a sincere personal touch
when seeing our newly painted blue
Bell ADTs being assembled in the Bell
Equipment factory in Richards Bay,
where their assembly was topped off
by the ‘Built with Pride in Africa’ decal,”
says Reddy. “We greatly appreciate that
Bell Equipment values us as clients by
painting our trucks blue at their factory
and it makes us proud to be associated
with the Bell brand.”
Delivery of the new fleet of Bell B30E
and B40E ADTs took place during April,
May, June, and July 2018, and most
trucks were delivered straight to their
respective mining sites from the Bell
Equipment Richards Bay factory.
“We at Andru Mining have a long
relationship with Bell Equipment and
taking the decision to now invest in the
Having 10 new Bell B40E articulated
dump trucks (ADTs) doing the same
production as 12 older ADTs at a coal
mining contract may seem like a dream,
but this is exactly what a Gauteng-based
contract miner has found.
Andru Mining, distinguished in
the South African mining industry by
its blue mining equipment, has been
around since the late 1970s when it
was founded by civil engineer Terry
Troughton. Day-to-day operational
control has since been passed on to a
new management team consisting of
Joe Naicker, the plant director; Anthony
Wardlaw, the operations director;
Shonel Reddy, the financial director; and
Branden Bowen, who is the commercial
and human resources director.
The company works exclusively in
opencast mining contracts, servicing
clients in the coal, gold, chrome, silica,
and fluorspar industries. Since acquiring
its first Bell B20B ADTs in 1996, Andru
Mining has owned many Bell machines
and has steadily grown its fleet through
the 20-ton, 30-ton, and 40-ton ranges.
“We were pleased to place an
order for six Bell B30E and 34 Bell
B40E ADTs with Bell Equipment sales
representative Vernon Johnstone in
Andru Mining, with its signature blue mining equipment, works exclusively in
opencast mining contracts and has owned many Bell machines, steadily growing its
fleet through the 20-ton, 30-ton, and 40-ton ranges.
4
APRIL 2019
Andru Mining invests in 40 new E-series ADTs
Back, from left: Branden Bowen (Andru
Mining commercial and HR director) and
Vernon Johnstone (Bell Equipment sales
representative). Front, from left: Joe
Naicker (Andru Mining plant director),
Shonel Reddy (Andru Mining financial
director), and Anthony Wardlaw (Andru
Mining operations director).
company’s E-series ADT was a relatively
easy one,” Naicker adds. “It’s a cost-
effective machine to run and maintain
compared to what is in the market, and
we’ve deployed the bulk of the 34 new
Bell B40E ADTs to our coal mining sites
between Middelburg and Belfast.”
Andru Mining’s new Bell B30E and
B40E ADTs have been bought with
the standard 12-month warranty with
unlimited hours — a fact which the
company feels works in its favour, as
utilisation on especially coal mines is
high. Coal production demands high
mechanical availabilities and the Bell
B40E ADTs run on average for 20 hours
in a 24-hour cycle.
“We’re enjoying the Bell
Fleetm@tic monitoring system,” Naicker
continues. “This adds value to the open
dialogue we have with Bell Equipment’s
customer support representatives like
Willem Johnson, who helps us in quickly
sorting out technical hiccups that do
crop up at times.”
Naicker is adamant that even
when their new Bell E-series ADTs
have exceeded their warranties, Bell
Equipment would still be asked to
undertake all 1 000-hour services to
ensure each machine has a clean bill of
health to ensure maximum uptime.
The proof of the pudding, however,
lies in the production figures of the new
Bell B40E ADTs and for more on this,
we turned to Wardlaw for his views
on the performance of the new Bell
B40E ADTs at one particular coal mine.
“We used to run 12 Bell B40D ADTs
on this same coal pit but with the new
Bell B40E ADTs with coal bins, we’ve
been able to reduce that number to 10
trucks and we still achieve the same
production. We don’t need any more
justification that our choice of the Bell
B40E ADT was the correct one.”
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