The first job for the GMK7450, with a maximum lifting capacity of 450t, seven-axle carrier and up to 130m reach, was to help dismantle the main iron crusher at BHP’s Mt. Whaleback Mine in Newman. This included removal of the equipment’s 68t spider and 62t mantle. This process will be repeated three times a year and the crane has now been moved on to BHP’s other remote sites to carry out bi-monthly maintenance operations on other equipment.
Newman is a modern mining town located in the Pilbara region, 9km north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Stephen Lazenby, sales manager at WATM, Manitowoc’s dealer in Western Australia, said: “Until recently, [BHP] was renting high capacity cranes from Perth, more than 1,200km away. Therefore it made perfect financial sense to purchase a crane the company can keep at the mine.”
