Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd (NLC) has inaugurated two new bucket wheel excavators with an operating capacity of up to 6800 cu m/hr for its Mines-II Project. The 1400L excavators were erected and supplied by Takraf India Ltd, Chennai, in collaboration with Takraf GmbH, Germany.

Each weighing close to 2600 tons, the giant crawler mounted excavators will be used in NLC Mines-II area for removing the overburden over the lignite deposit. The maximum cutting height of the machine is 30 meters.

This is the first time in the NLC history that two excavators of such large size were inaugurated at the same time. It is to the credit of the joint effort of the project officials from NLC along with the project management of Takraf and its subcontractors to complete the project five months ahead of the tight schedule. Takraf India executed the project on a turnkey basis utilizing the trusted technology of their principals Takraf GmbH from Germany. The continuous mining technologies for open pit mines developed by Germans have been successfully used by NLC for several decades now, providing the advantages of low cost of continuous lignite mining.

The new bucket wheel excavators were inaugurated on February 5 in the Mine-II site by Shri B. Surender Mohan, chairman cum managing director, NLC, in the presence of other NLC directors, officials, and employees of the contractor and his subcontractors, as well as guests and press representatives.

Tenova Takraf is a key supplier of equipment and systems for open-pit mining and underground solutions and bulk handling, having provided hundreds of complete systems, as well as individual machines to clients all over the world in all climatic conditions. Together with Tenova Delkor, which has been fully integrated into Tenova Takraf, complete systems for coal washing and solid-liquid separation can be offered.

Tenova is a worldwide supplier of advanced technologies, products, and engineering services for the metals and mining & minerals industries.

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