To assist with stabilisation of the mine-site area, the stacker pictured is used for returning huge amounts of clay and soil. This gigantic machine is a serious piece of engineering: it weighs 21,000 tonnes and is over 10 storeys high. In fact, when fully extended, this stacker wouldn’t even fit in the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
At the large scale open cut mining operation, the enormous stacker also helps to reduce fire risk at the base of the mine. Even more, it assists with progressive rehabilitation by back-filling large volumes of earth into areas of the mine where minerals are no longer extracted.
With such a large machine, clearly it’s a big challenge when the annual maintenance and periodic service is required. The shutdown process for this unit can take many hours, even weeks.
To minimise to the hours needed to maintain this stacker, the service team needs to keep working 24/7. Therefore, to ensure the safest and most efficient maintenance operation, effective and reliable lighting is required.
However, that was a problem. The availability of effective lighting – and the amount of light that was actually required – was an ongoing issue for the mine-site engineers. So, seeking a cost-effective long-term lighting solution (that would offer cost savings over the current hire arrangement), the mining operation reached out to Allight.
The Allight team are specialists in large scale transportable lighting towers, with a range of lighting towers always in stock.
The team at Allight investigate the lighting challenge and quickly provided a strategic lighting plan. When compared with current costs, it clearly showed that the payback for capital expenditure to purchase would be the most financially prudent alternative.
The overall quality of the Allight lighting towers, with specific mine spec compliance and historical reliability were the key reasons why they were accepted as the towers of choice.
In purchasing the Allight mine spec lighting towers – instead of hiring as they had done previously – the minesite optimized productivity by solving the ongoing service, repair and maintenance issues. Even more, they also gained emergency lighting towers as capital assets.
With the massive stacker now safely and efficiently covered in light from top to bottom during servicing, the operation is much safer, faster and smoother, saving both time and money.
For more information on the range of mobile lighting towers available visit our website or email our sales team.
