There is a lot to admire about the Sandvik Mining mechanical cutting division and having just come back from the Zeltweg headquarters in Austria, IM is confident there will be even more to appreciate in future years.
The division and its products have stood the test of time: it will celebrate its 175-year anniversary in 2026 at the same time as several of the machines it produced in the 1970s continue to operate, far surpassing the typical 15-year (three-time) rebuild lifecycle.
Its offering spans roadheaders, bolter miners, borer miners, haulage systems and rubber tyred vehicles, with an active fleet of 430 pieces of equipment; its services, logistics and parts footprint will soon include 10 different locations across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America.
The division is tied to more than coal, reflected in its 2024 revenue breakdown that had a 9% contribution from industrial minerals and a 13% contribution from ‘hard rock’ (including tunnelling).
And beyond that, the division intends to grow its manufacturing capabilities externally, with components manufactured in Zeltweg currently destined for companies outside of Sandvik set to increase.
Three tech pillars
The mechanical cutting division is, like all manufacturers in this space, being shaped by the increased uptake and demand for solutions that are automated, ‘connected’ (read: digitalised) and electrified.
On the latter, it has an advantage, with all its mechanical cutting products offering grid connection. In instances such as mine development where machines cannot tram via tethered cables, EU Stage V/US EPA Tier 4 Final compliant diesel engines are available. There is also talk of using biodiesel and potentially battery-electric drivetrains for this application in the future to further reduce emissions in development headings.
In terms of digitalisation, the company has engineered a production- and maintenance-related digital platform outside of the MySandvik framework to provide a fit-for-purpose, cloud-based solution to remotely connect equipment out in the field. The most advanced digital maintenance packages the company offers customers via special licences could soon see Sandvik Mining experts interpret machine data to advise of when to schedule maintenance, when to order spare parts and when to intervene for immediate troubleshooting.
One can look to the latest generation bolter miner, the Sandvik MB672, and the company’s roadheaders for examples of the most advanced levels of automation currently available to customers.
A combination of the Roadheader Guidance System and CUTRONIC® on roadheaders can see these machines automatically cut profiles with increased accuracy – a teleremote trial of such a setup was realised on a tunnelling project in Australia recently. The latest generation MB672, meanwhile, is equipped with a round magazine capable of automatically feeding up to four bolts, resin cartridges and drill steels as part of a fully automated bolting process.
The division has guided for all its machines to be capable of teleremote operation by 2030; full automation capability is expected by 2040.
The second-generation Sandvik MX650 hard-rock mechanical cutter the company is in the throes of carrying out detailed design on – guided by ReThink Mining, and backed by Agnico Eagle, Boliden and LKAB – would combine all these technology developments to enable a “step change” in mine development, according to Thomas Vallant, President of Sandvik’s Mechnical Cutting division. The development of the Sandvik MN330 narrow reef production system for Anglo American – a project currently on ice despite a successful initial trial at Mototolo in South Africa – is also setting a baseline for future zero-emission, automated hard-rock cutting options in height-constrained environments.
Coal continuity
It would be easy to deduce that the development of hard-rock cutting equipment within the mechanical cutting division was a direct response to some prominent EU-based investors rallying against companies with coal interests, but Vallant and his team have remained steadfast in their commitment to this commodity.
“We see a significant opportunity in the coal market to leverage our existing and future portfolio of bolter miners, continuous miners and roadheaders,” he said. “The market is calling out for partners offering long-term support that goes beyond replacement parts, to companies that have longer-term technology strategies to make operations safer, more productive and more profitable.”
Speaking to Vallant and his team and seeing the plans for the revamped Zeltweg Final Assembly facility and offices – expected to be realised in late 2026 – it became obvious that the division is looking to partner for the long term.
“We’re seeing more customers coming to us with strategic requests and ideas of partnering to achieve their long-term aims,” he added.
This is most abundantly clear on the hard-rock cutting side and the BHP Jansen example (more on that later), but Vallant’s colleague, Uwe Restner, Vice President – Product Line Management Underground Continuous Mining, also talked through how Sandvik is working with coal clients on bringing bolting operations closer to that fully-autonomous process goal.
“In order to progress from what we are now able to offer with the MB672 and fully-automated bolting options, we need to work with customers on devising new flexible types of supportive mesh that can be fitted onto machines to move away from the current manual process,” he explained. “This may require the market to overcome the change resistance against the use of plastic mesh stored on mesh rolls, as well as the use of new rock bolt types.”
The latter will certainly be helped by the recent incorporation of DSI into the adjacent Sandvik Ground Support division.
The development of new machines will also aid these customer-focused goals and Restner displayed plenty of planned additions to the line-up during IM’s visit. This includes a new low-seam MB672 bolter miner (set to be called the MB672 LH), and new continuous miners – some of which have already been introduced with the made-in-India Sandvik MC350 and the Sandvik MC351 (recently displayed at a coal show in the US).
“There is clearly an opening in certain market segments where one of the big manufacturers is perceived to be taking a step back from supporting coal operations,” Vallant said. “We intend to make inroads in these markets where it makes sense.”
The Zeltweg Final Assembly line showcased this with the first Sandvik MC431 continuous miner set to operate in Australia being assembled at the time of IM’s visit (pictured below). A recent continuous miner sale to the US has also been celebrated, with the division seeing massive potential for claiming a greater share of sales in that room & pillar mining market.
In China, specifically, the division is well on the way to establishing the bolter miner as an industry standard, with more than 100 of these units operating in the Asian nation alone.
Jansen developments
Beyond coal, however, the Mechanical Cutting division has plenty of potential avenues to expand.
There was much discussion in Zeltweg about the continuous miner systems developed for the BHP-owned Jansen potash project in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Vallant went all the way back to December 2008 to the first kick-off meeting between the miner and supplier to chart the history of this project, while looking forward to the start-up of the first unit next year.
Each mining system included in this project consists of a cable-powered Sandvik MF460 borer miner and a Sandvik PO140 extendable conveyor. The Sandvik MF460s will cut widths of 6.3 m and heights of up to 4.36 m per cut, with one cut and return cut up to 2 km in length to leave a circa 12 m-wide room. Each integrated system can produce around 1,300-1,500 t/h, according to the OEM.
BHP commissioned Sandvik to carry out the engineering design of the Sandvik MF460 from 2010 to 2012. With the borer miner’s high-volume production creating a materials handling challenge, BHP also commissioned Sandvik to concept design and test the Sandvik PO140 in 2014.
Following successful testing, BHP and Sandvik signed a manufacturing and testing agreement for one Sandvik MF460 and one Sandvik PO140 in 2016. The complete system proved highly productive during tests at SWS (Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG) salt mine in Germany from 2018 to 2021, doubling the industry benchmark for tonnes per hour, according to Sandvik. Improvements were identified and designed to further increase the system’s productivity and reliability, including installing ground support roof bolting while cutting and loading, reducing turnaround and relocation time and exploring remote operation potential.
This integrated system is notable for being much larger than other mining machines in the Saskatchewan Potash basin. The MF460-led system also requires less workers, equating to a lower labour cost per tonne, but also a lower overall equipment cost per tonne of potash produced, which BHP believes will give it an operating cost advantage over other Saskatchewan potash majors.
The delivery of these units will, alongside other machines going to the salt, gypsum and potash markets, see industrial minerals-based revenues increase at the division in future years.
Vallant, sensing another market opportunity, sees the potential for commercialisation of other conveyor-based solutions that leverage the experience gained from the Jansen product development exercise.
“When you look at the status quo in these types of soft rock room & pillar operations – many of which are located in Saskatchewan – a variant of our system would offer significant flexibility and productivity benefits,” he said. “It is early days for these developments, but we think there will be other products following the system we have devised for Jansen.”
Cutting constraints
When it comes to hard-rock cutting, the dynamic is different with a sustained showcase of Sandvik’s capabilities not yet in existence.
This is down to the complexity of cutting/boring in these variable environments, plus the need to ensure downstream bolting and material handling operations can keep up with progress at the face.
Anyone involved in this sector will admit that Uniaxial Compressive Strength (UCS) measured in MPa is only one part of the puzzle when it comes to assessing if rock formations or orebodies can be economically cut or bored through.
The team at Zeltweg are aware of this, with Restner telling IM about the Rock Mass C R model Sandvik has devised to better analyse which rocks are suited to its machines.
“When we consider rock cuttability, we have traditionally looked at applications with rock that has a UCS of less than 140 MPa,” Restner said. This is especially so for roadheaders.
The continued development of the MX650 – the ‘X’ standing for extra hard rock in this case – is an exception to this, having been tested in rocks boasting a UCS of 300 MPa at the Mittersill mine in Austria, owned by Sandvik Group. The company’s ongoing testing of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) bits on the cutting heads of machines could also push some of the company’s existing commercial offering beyond this threshold.
“The reality is, though, that we have cut rock with a UCS up to 180 MPa in some applications with our roadheaders where the rock is in shear-like structures,” Restner said. “We can no longer analyse cuttability by UCS alone.”
A tour of Zeltweg’s rock samples close to its high-load, hard-rock cutting test rig, part of the mechanical cutting competence centre established there 10 years ago, reinforces Restner’s words, with cut rock formations over 140 MPa featured in an extensive line-up.
One would assume the physical rock test library Zeltweg has assembled would soon be replaced by digital simulations or even digital twins, but Restner saw no digital alternative on the horizon that was able to accurately reflect rock variability for cutting analysis.
“There are no digital twins currently reflecting the conditions that a roadheader, for instance, will be cutting in,” he said. “This is why we continue to encourage interested companies to send us representative samples of material to cut on our test rig.”
Some companies go even further than this – Anglo American, for instance – invested in a huge block of representative stone that the team at Zeltweg could steer the MN330 hard-rock continuous miner through to get an accurate reading of its ability to cut in the Merensky Reef of South Africa.
There are also cuttability tests on show from the cutting system developed for the first generation MX650, with a sample from the Musselwhite mine (formerly owned by Goldcorp, then Newmont and now Orla Mining) catching IM’s eye.
These issues are widely acknowledged by the hard-rock mine development community.
This same community is also aware of the different avenues that vendors are pursuing to compete with the drill and blast process – undercutting technology and a variation of the traditional tunnel boring method among them.
Restner detailed numerous options the company has considered in looking to make a breakthrough in hard-rock mine development – microwave technology among these – yet he said the undercutting solution offered by the MX650, which could cut as well as bolt simultaneously, was by the far the best option explored.
“The MX650 is not going to work in every application when it is benchmarked against drill and blast, but, if we prove out that it can effectively cut, mesh and bolt, and do so with development rates of 10 m/d or more, the wider industry will soon start to take note,” he said.
Source: im-mining.com
