CONVEYING
Part of the 8.8 mile‘ West Overland Belt’ at Warrior Met Coal supplied by BEUMER Group
the Indian market. The new Reliance MET City facility broadens BEUMER’ s production capabilities, enabling the company to locally manufacture equipment for all of its major business segments.
To get some insights on its presence in mining specifically, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore caught up with Peter Sehl, Director of Sales- Minerals & Mining.
Sehl:“ BEUMER remains a family-owned business and that means we have a long term view both on innovations to benefit our main markets, including mining, and on sustained investment. From the very beginning it was conveying that Bernard Beumer, the Founder, was most passionate about. In the 1970s BEUMER was the first company to build horizontally curved and vertically curved conveyors – allowing the removal of multiple transfer points, which leads to much higher efficiency, less creation of dust and fewer potential points of failure with reduced maintenance. Plus, you no longer will have high power requirements at all those transfer points along the conveyor route.”
Sehl said that BEUMER prefers to get involved in projects as early as possible, so it can bring its holistic approach and unique skill set supported by automated tools like its proprietary BEUMER Overland Layouting Tool( BOLT).“ We can develop routing options in 3D very efficiently and then very quickly provide visualisations and simulations. Sometimes in as little as one or two months we can come up with a fairly final design that’ s completely optimised. This is one of the things I think makes us stand out. But I would say our designs are also ahead- our conveyors typically run with tighter radii than others, and we have many successful references to prove it.”
It is true that BEUMER is still primarily known for its strong position in long range limestone conveyors for the cement industry and that perception continues to some degree. But its influence in mining increased significantly with its acquisition of FAM in 2022; and it has seen some major project successes. A recent standout project is the Blue Creek project for Warrior Met Coal. The 8.8-mile-long‘ West Overland Belt’ connects the new Blue Creek coal preparation plant directly to the train load-out, supporting the expansion of Warrior Met Coal’ s metallurgical coal operation in Alabama, USA. Designed with 19 horizontal curves, including radii as tight as 2,000 ft, and numerous elevated sections, this troughed belt conveyor navigates challenging terrain with precision, proving to be the most economical and technically sound transport solution for the route. With a transport capacity of 1,500 tons per hour, the system is built to handle over 13.1 million tons of clean metallurgical coal annually. This capacity enables Warrior Met Coal to load up to 20 trains per week, resulting in a weekly throughput of 252,000 tons, while also removing the need for an estimated 14,000 truck miles per day. This installation plays an important role in meeting the rising global demand for highgrade steel-making coal.
The contract was signed in January 2024, and the conveyor was commissioned and moving material in October 2025 – very quickly by industry standards. Sehl:“ And it wasn’ t an easy project – it involved a lot of steel as it’ s a very hilly area with a lot of obstacles to cross – about 50 % of the conveyor is elevated. To support the tight schedule, the client requested that most of that steel be fabricated locally.”
Another recent delivery is a large twoway pipe conveyor system for a strategic development project at the Port of Saguenay in Quebec, Canada which will connect the port with customers in the new industrial
port zone and increase the port’ s ability to both import and export iron ore and other materials – that will be commissioned soon.
BEUMER started to get involved in larger capacity mining conveyors years back with the supply of 16 high capacity conveyors for Vale at Teluk Rubiah Maritime Terminal( TRMT) in Perak, Malaysia which handles iron ore at 10,500 t / h and also the Bloom Lake overland conveyor in Quebec.
He adds:“ Scalability and belt speed has not been an issue for us in terms of larger overland conveyors and moving from limestone and cement installations to mining. Many of our conveyors in mining run at higher speeds, just as our limestone conveyors do but with a much larger capacity.”
Sehl:“ With the acquisition of FAM we also integrated the experience of the FAM team in Magdeburg and their regional offices in Calgary, Canada, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and in Santiago, Chile.” FAM had numerous large conveyor references from the lignite mines in Germany to the oil sands in Alberta including systems of over 16,000 t / h. Following the integration of FAM, BEUMER also has a number of other recent project references for high-capacity conveyors, including BHP Minera Escondida, Chile in 2023 for copper leached ripios transport, where an OLC with a capacity of 5,000 t / h feeds 18 grasshoppers on crawlers; plus additional iron ore high-capacity conveyor projects in Brazil for Vale.
Pipe conveyors also have a lot of applicability in mining – in India for example it is a very widely accepted technology – BEUMER recently completed a pipe conveyor system for transporting tailings at HZL’ s Rajpura Dariba mine, supporting HZL’ s sustainability goals by safely managing hazardous waste and enabling green initiatives.
In China BEUMER has some really stand out projects – like its project for Jiangsu Jinfeng Cement, where the project’ s scope included connecting the three quarries to the plant over almost 12 km with a system capable of replacing the truck transport, thereby reducing environmental pollution and increasing capacity.“ The client worked with us and made a strategic decision to use a double-deck layout for the BEUMER overland conveying system optimised space and facilitated efficient handling of increased limestone volumes. This design allows the conveyors to transition from a stacked configuration to a side-by-side arrangement for feeding at the three quarries and discharging.”
The solution’ s energy-efficient design, featuring low resistance components, halved the required drive power, resulting in substantial energy cost savings against an annual consumption of approximately 72,000 MWh. The compact integration
International Mining | FEBRUARY 2025