TAKRAF South Africa: Proves its resilience with good growth

Based on its order book performance last year, TAKRAF South Africa, part of the global TAKRAF Group, has good reason to be optimistic about its outlook for 2023.

Despite the continuing challenges in the resources sector, we closed 2022 having seen good growth in demand over the year, both for our TAKRAF materials handling technologies and for our DELKOR solid/liquid separation equipment," says MD, Richard Späth.

Orders received during 2022 came from southern, eastern and central Africa, and included a slewing and luffing stacker, portal reclaimer and associated yard conveyors for a major South African diamond mine; a thickener and flocculant plant for a Tanzanian gold mining company; stockyard machines for a copper smelter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); a crushing station, sizer and apron feeder for a Mozambican coal mine; and a rapid load out station for a manganese miner in Gabon.

"Encouragingly, we saw further orders from mines on which we were already busy with other projects," says Späth. "For example, a platinum miner in South Africa, for which we were commissioning a 2,000 t/h radial stacker, placed a further order for a flotation cell package."

Orders that came from further afield included the supply of a belt feeder for a Peruvian gold mine, crushing equipment for an aluminium producer in Greece and a Redler bucket elevator and en masse conveyor for a sugar plant in the Philippines.

"Good progress was also made on projects already in our order book at the beginning of the year," notes Späth. "For example, delivery of four new generation DELKOR BQR 500 flotation cells, equipped with the latest MAXGen mechanism, to an iron ore producer in South Africa has been completed successfully."

Features of the flotation circuit include allowing bypassing of a cell for maintenance without having to shut the circuit down completely.

Other completed work includes an in plant material handling system for one of the largest fluorspar miners in the world, while refurbishment of a TAKRAF bucket wheel reclaimer on an iron ore mine continued.

As a trusted supplier of apron feeders, TAKRAF South Africa continues to see ongoing demand for this technology. An apron feeder, delivered to a copper mine in South Africa, was supplied complete with a twin spillage conveyor for operation 1,600 m underground.

This order followed the delivery of two machines for a leading copper/cobalt producer in the DRC and three apron feeders to a gold project in the Republic of Guinea.

"Our performance in 2022 highlights the resilience of our company, a combination not only of our respected suite of technologies, project management skills and customer service, but also of the diversity of commodity producers for which we provide innovative and sustainable solutions – solutions that lower the cost of ownership and reduce environmental impact by improving efficiency using safe and reliable equipment," concludes Späth.