On our social media sites we have been sharing much of the hustle and happenings with our medium to larger scale plants, so we wanted to share what has been going on at a ‘smaller scale’. We say a ‘smaller scale’ because that doesn’t mean any less work goes into making small scale plants, in fact we pour just as much effort into the APT Groundbreaker division (catering for the entry-level and small-scale mining sector) as we do our larger plants. Each one is developed with purpose and as everything should be; it develops with time and improvement should always be a priority with any business in order to stay relevant and ahead of the game. This is exactly what has been happening with the GroundBreaker division of late; new products developing, providing solutions for in-field process and recovery of various minerals in various terrains and environments while remaining well priced and a worth-while purchase.
We have had a couple of orders for RG30 wash plants, most excitingly for ruby recovery taking place in East Africa, as well as RG30 plants for alluvial gold recovery into Guyana, South America.
In manufacture we currently also have RDGK plants for various clients worldwide, these are cutting edge solutions for “early liberation” mineral recovery by gravity. The RD wet impact grinders are manufactured and designed to be robust and impart a massive kinetic blow to feed rock and thus fractures it on the fracture plains, releasing the heavier mineral usually located in that area. The RDGK feed tonnage is a mere 1 to 1.5 t/hr and if fed with decent grade this little trojan workhorse can certainly pay dividends. They can certainly be swarmed into areas where there is need, rather than installing larger solutions which require more infrastructure, power etc. We have just delivered a RDGK which will be employed as a custom milling option, rather than traditional round and stamp mills, in a central African country. We look forward to receiving feedback on this soon. From historical data, we have noted that running an RDGK on free gold recovery over that of a round mill/mercury combo has many advantages; way lower power consumption and operating costs (about a third), as well as clean processing (no mercury).
These small-scale plants offer miners wishing to undertake “exploration with production” processing in-field a great solution. Feedback citing the need for quality, consistency, diverse in-field operability, fast track start-up, reliability and good recovery parameters has been taken into consideration and implemented using APT philosophy of moving the bar towards client needs.
