Fazos technical director, Marek Mika, spoke exclusively to International Longwall News about his company’s big plans for the future. It is all about “escaping to the future,” as Mika likes to describe it.
Established in 1974 to meet the increasing demands of the rapidly growing Polish mining industry, Fazos was originally owned by the Polish State Treasury. In the early 1990s, following major political upheavals in Poland, the country’s top 300 state-run enterprises were privatised, and Fazos was one of these. An investment fund was set up to facilitate this process and strategic investors in the various companies were sought. Fazos was bought 60% by a group of investors, including ex mine directors, while the Treasury retained a 20% holding.
The effects of the restructuring are clearly evident in the company’s productivity and output levels. Prior to full privatisation Fazos employed 2000 employees and generated a turnover of US$5 million: the company now has 586 employees and annual turnover exceeds US$40 million.
Fazos specialises in the manufacture of powered roof supports at heights ranging from 0.46m to 6m. It introduced its first set of roof supports into Australia in 1988 to the Brimstone mine in New South Wales. The supports are remembered as not being a huge success and Fazos’ reputation in Australia today still suffers from perceptions that are now 15 years old.
Originally designed to mine only ten longwall blocks, the Brimstone longwall package was “basic and budget,” in the words of a manager who was at the mine at the time. Despite the use of a refurbished coal mill (out of the UK) rather than a shearer, for a period of time Brimstone was one of the top producers in Australia. But things went bad when a decision was made to continue mining in a deeper and thinner part of the Bulli seam.
“Being a two-stage leg, the Fazos supports were not able to cope with going from a seam thickness of 2.6-8m to 2.1-2.2m,” the ex-manager said. “They were very good in the initial area they were designed for but in the new area of the mine they were operating out of design criteria. They could never hold up in the conditions they were subjected to.”
One of the many reasons the supports ‘failed’ is because the original tender package was put together through a group of intermediaries, including a UK agent and the Kopex agency. Fazos received its technical briefing from Kopex which had liaised with a number of other equipment suppliers. As Mika remarked: “The information became dissipated.”
Fazos takes a very different approach today. Close contact with the end user is seen as pivotal so that equipment can be made fit-for-purpose. Fazos also uses the same design tools as leading OEMs, including CAD, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and fatigue analysis. While high-grade steels and other raw materials are usually sourced in Poland, Mika said steel might sometimes be procured direct from a steelworks a mine was supplying with coal. This three-way arrangement meant actual cash changing hands could be limited. Mika said there was no problem sourcing materials from other European steelworks. All the major agencies are operating in the Polish market and becoming increasingly competitive in terms of both price and delivery.
“Through very accurate mechanical analysis we are able to say genuinely that our longwall systems are tailored to the conditions. This a major shift from our initial activities,” Mika said.
Globally Fazos has over 60 installations in operation including 30 longwall systems sold to Belarus for potash mining. Fazos was instrumental in introducing longwall mining to Belarus for mining the potash resource and were also the nominated supplier for the entire system.
The company’s ability to provide engineered solutions has seen the introduction of several innovations in European deep mines that use arch support.
For example, to help with the maintenance of the crossing between the longwall and maingate, a likely site of probable complications delaying longwall operations, Fazos developed a special powered gate-end support.
The three unit device supports the roof at the intersection of the face and gate and allows disassembly of the legs of the arch supports ahead of drive advance. Mika said it was initially extremely hard to convince miners in Europe that the idea had merit but once established the method has become widely adopted. This unit has been very successfully introduced to the German market and are successfully operating in Luisental, Blummental, Ensdorf and Waltzum.
Beyond its established European market, possibly the most significant recent achievement was the order by Consol Energy’s Mine 84 longwall in the USA, for four Fazos shields.
Fazos will supply the steel structure, legs, hydraulics and valves of six shields, by mid-November, which will interface with the existing Joy face.
In Australia, Fazos, as part of a grouping of suppliers called “The Longwall Alliance,” is currently bidding for a new longwall package.
A lower price is, of course, one of the attractions of a smaller OEM, though it is unlikely mines will be willing to take a risk if the equipment is not perceived to be at least as good as competitive equipment. Those involved with the tender process at mine site level describe Fazos as a credible third player in terms of technical ability.
Next week ILN looks at Fazos’ strategy in the Australian market.
