Wirtgen at the 2017 Symposium Mines Guinea event

With its economical and environmentally friendly solutions, Wirtgen has been active in the African market for more than 30 years. In addition to supplying machines, the local Wirtgen Group sales and service company Wirtgen South Africa and selected dealers in the other African states ensure fast reaction times with their dense service network. Technical support is provided directly in the mine or in workshops that are specially designed for the large machines. The ingenious logistics concept ensures the continuous provision of original spare parts. Wirtgen experts also support customers at any time with customized, on-site project planning which is specially tailored to their needs.

With the surface miners 2200 SM/2200 SM 3.8, 2500 SM and the 4200 SM, Wirtgen offers machines in three performance classes that can be configured variably and specifically for each project. The surface miners cut and crush the rock with a special cutting drum and load it onto heavy-duty trucks with their robust conveying systems, all in a single operation. The material can also be deposited between the crawler units as a windrow or sidecast alongside the machine. Featuring three different operating methods, Wirtgen surface miners are very versatile, with cutting widths ranging from 2.20 m to 4.20 m, cutting depths of 0 cm to 83 cm and an unconfined compressive strength of 120 MPa. Special machines for rock operations even cut hard granite up to 260 MPa. Wirtgen is the only manufacturer to cover a performance range that extends up to 3,000 t/h in combination with direct loading via a loading belt.

As surface mining does not require blasting or drilling, it avoids vibrations, noise and dust, reducing the environmental impact while increasing safety in open cast mining. The selective mining process not only boosts material quality, but also increases the exploitation of the deposits, as the Wirtgen surface miners can efficiently mine raw materials that were previously unprofitable to extract, creating added value. For mining companies, this translates into significant quality and financial advantages during mining and subsequent processing.

In addition to mining raw materials, the surface miners are also used for the development of large-scale infrastructure projects such as road, rail and tunnel routing operations.

Wirtgen surface miners have been established in the West African Republic of Guinea for more than 10 years. A fleet of around 20 machines operate primarily in bauxite mines. Customers are supported directly from the Wirtgen brand headquarters in Germany and a local facility in Conakry that provides on-site services, ranging from technical assistance to MARC (Maintenance and Repair Contracts), with personnel from the brand headquarters as well as local technicians.

As part of the symposium at the Sheraton Grand Hotel Conakry, Wirtgen will also be giving an exciting specialist presentation entitled “High Performance; Safe & Environmentally Friendly Bauxite Mining in Guinea” showing project solutions in the West African state.

Experienced Wirtgen mining experts will also be available to answer any application questions as well as compare notes, and are looking forward to interesting discussions with professionals from the industry.