Joaquim Barreiros, Production Manager at EPDM, the owner’s sister company in charge of equipment and maintenance, explains the importance of the haulage strategy to production planning.
“Our objective is to reduce the overall size of the fleet by increasing the capacity of the individual trucks, while at the same time enhancing our production by getting more round trips per shift,” he says.
“The Minetruck MT6020 is well suited for this purpose. They are larger and faster and that will enable us to successively phase out our 40 tonners.”
There are two main orebodies at the site, Moinho and Feitais, linked by a 4 km long conveyor tunnel. Both sections are in production using the bench-and-fill method with Atlas Copco Boomer and Simba drill rigs.
The Boomer rigs are used for access roadways, 5 m x 5 m from the main ramp, while the Simba rigs are used for longhole production drilling.
Epiroc operated under the trademark “Atlas Copco” prior to January 1, 2018.