Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation entered the aggregates business by opening a new quarry to meet the market demand created by infrastructure development in Guinea, a small coastal country in West Africa.
As a newcomer in the quarry business, they relied on
Guinea’s rich reserves of minerals are identified as a key pillar to its development agenda. By contrast, poor infrastructure is the primary inhibitor to the country’s economic development. The percentage of paved roads of the total road network, for example, is among the lowest in the Sub-Saharan region. The railway system is incapable of supporting Guinea’s mining and exports. It was against this backdrop that Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation decided to invest in the opening of a new quarry.
“We wanted to share our added value; the aggregates business was one of the most neglected, yet most needed industries, because it enables us to produce various types of material needed for infrastructure development, including roads and railway support for both import and export business, construction and much more,” said Mohamed Ndao, CEO of Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation.
Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation is a joint venture co-owned by the oil company Okapi Energy Group. The company approached Metso to help them develop a quarry system with full mechanical and electrical engineering supervision.
With the customer being a newcomer in the quarry business, they wanted to reduce commercial risks and ensure overall equipment efficiency by using a well-experienced service provider, Metso.
When the company approached Metso, their demands were more for asphalt aggregates; however, they required a flexible process solution to address both the concrete application as well as the asphalt application for road-building markets. The needed flexibility made Nordplant the perfect solution for them. The standardised solution consists of primary, secondary and tertiary crushing and vibrating equipment, and it provides a fast and effective solution for quick and high-performance operation – just what Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation was hoping for.
“Metso provided us with the best solution, and their world-class screening and crushing equipment enabled us to start operating on time and to reach our production targets. With the NordplantTM solution, our operation is running at an increased uptime with low maintenance costs,” added Ndao.
The key to Metso’s service offering is our sales and technical team’s unique knowledge and experience. To demonstrate this, the customer was shown proven results of earlier projects implemented in the region.
“To ensure that we provide the customer with the best solution and to help them drive a sustainable business, we brought together our sales and technical experts to share their knowledge and experience with the customer, using one of our latest quarry implementation processes in Africa as a benchmark,” explains Pascal Florian, VP, aggregates sales in market area Africa and Middle East.
He continues: “We also took the Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation executive and engineering team on an excursion to one of our customer’s operating sites so that they could have a first-hand look at Metso’s proven results.”
Commenting on why they chose Metso, Ndao said, “We approached Metso after hearing about their products and services from another successful company in the region that uses Metso equipment and services. This gave us confidence knowing that we will be working with a company that has expert knowledge and that is familiar with the aggregates business.”
For Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation, Metso provided three crushing stages and a selective crushing circuit for an excellent aggregate quality in terms of shape.
The crushing plant includes a Nordberg primary jaw crusher C116, a Nordberg HP300 standard coarse cone crusher, an HP300 short head coarse as well as two screens, a Metso CVB1845-4M and CVB2060-4M. The plant capacity is 200 tonnes/hour of five aggregates end-products.
The complete solution includes steelworks, two intermediate hoppers for a proper and regular feeding of the HP crushers, 15 Metso conveyors and the complete electrical and automation equipment.
Commenting on the equipment functionality and efficiency as well as the maintenance, Appolinaire Haba, project manager at Hummingbird Guinea Mining Corporation, said: “Metso’s equipment offers production efficiency, and the maintenance manual that they provided us with is easy to understand and use. The team operating the crusher is satisfied with the ease of use of the equipment.
“Metso’s team demonstrated professionalism throughout. The on-site training that they provided us with was very informative. Our trained employees quickly became autonomous. We can refer Metso to third parties as a great solution provider for developing a crushing business,” he concluded.
Hummingbird Guinea provides its customers with a diverse range of aggregates products for the construction of armored concrete, buildings, roads, ports and railway tracks.
