Formerly owned by Wesfarmers Resources, the Curragh Coal Mine (now operated by Coronado Curragh Pty Ltd) is located in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, 30km north of Blackwater. The main product from the mine is metallurgical (coking) coal for export.

Wesfarmers identified a need to refurbish the run of mine (ROM) coal handling facility at Curragh, in order to accommodate increased production and potential future expansion requirements. They subsequently embarked upon a major upgrade of this essential infrastructure, to enable increased reliability and capacity, and extend the life of the facility.

Walz Group was engaged to supply and install structural, mechanical, piping and electrical works, including the onsite civil package and multiple tie-ins to existing plant. We provided an end-to-end solution, performing procurement, demolition and decommissioning of redundant infrastructure before delivering construction and erection/installation services for the material handling facility and associated infrastructure works. Our scope also included verification, and pre-commissioning as well as commissioning support. The works included:

• Structural steel supply and installation – 650t (Structural steel, guards, pulley frames)s
• Mechanical supply and installation – 200t (idlers, pulleys, drives, scrapers, belts)
• Piping supply and installation – 2,000m (25NB-150NB (carbon steel / galvanised / HDPE))
• Platework supply and installation – 160t (Chutes, liners)
• Electrical and instrumentation (supply and installation) — managed by Walz, performed by subcontractors
• Civil (support and installation) — managed by Walz, performed by subcontractors
• Tie-ins to existing plant

After working together successfully on previous projects, Wesfarmers Curragh Pty Ltd (WCPL) engaged Walz Group to support the installation of a new tailings retreat circuit to the Coal Preparation Plant 1 (CPP1) at its Blackwater mine in Queensland. We’ve worked at Curragh before and have gained a solid understanding of the mine’s operational requirements. For this upgrade project, we performed all structural, mechanical and piping, and electrical installation components. We outsourced the electrical works component to a trusted subcontractor. Our fabrication workshop in Gladstone produced the custom pipework, handrails, and platework for the project. Blasting and painting was also performed by Walz in our purpose built facility.

After commissioning, the upgrade increased the plant’s yield by around two percent, delivering approximately 30 tonnes per hour of additional secondary product.

The works incorporated three main areas of the tailings retreat circuit — the Eastern building, the Western building and the secondary product conveyor. A new clarified water pump was also installed to supply the additional demand from the new circuit.

Connecting to the eastern side of CPP1, the Eastern building houses the tailings cyclones, sieve bends, spirals feed sump, and the relocated spirals feed pump.

The Western building connects to a previously existing structure and incorporates the spiral banks, spirals product sump and pump, spirals product cyclone cluster, fine coal centrifuge, and the reject sump and pump.

The secondary product conveyor is fed by the centrifuge, running from the new Western building to transfer product onto the existing steaming coal conveyor.