Australian Mining sat down with MASPRO to discuss the engineering company’s rapid growth and future objectives for the resources industry.
For almost two decades, MASPRO has been a savvy problem-solver in the Australian resources industry, innovating solutions to not only extend product life but also drive greater operational efficiency.
“We design, engineer and manufacture industry-leading solutions for mobile mining equipment to withstand the harshest mining conditions,” MASPRO sales director Martin Kennard told Australian Mining.
“We pride ourselves in partnering with customers to innovate and redesign high-quality components, parts and assemblies for the world’s best mining equipment.”
It’s one thing to innovate a new solution, but it’s another thing to take an ill-performing component, reverse engineer it to identify the root cause, and design a novel solution that solves the issue, extending asset life in the process.
This is the MASPRO way, something that has enabled the technology company to partner with and design new products for many of Australia’s Tier 1 miners and contractors.
Image: MASPRO
Kennard explained a MASPRO case study in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
“We had a situation where a Tier 1 mining client came to us with a reoccurring problem where a rotation unit for a drill was failing after very low hours,” he said. “The maximum they were getting was 800 hours, and as low as 50 hours out of a unit.
“We trialled our unit and it got a bit longer life but similar failures, which was due to the conditions and the situations that they were drilling in.
“So we pulled our engineering team together, came up with a proposal for the client which they were happy with and went ahead with engineering something new. And from design to manufacturing we had it on site in about six weeks.
“They ran that unit to 3000 hours – their scheduled change-out time – and were very happy with the product. MASPRO has now become this client’s preferred supplier for this component across all their sites.”
The Tier 1 mining client was not only impressed by the quality of MASPRO’s solution but also by the quick turnaround, which is something Kennard believes separates the company from similar services offered by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
“The advantages of coming to us is that we’re an agile engineering company that can implement a change, redesign or modification to serve the customer quickly,” he said.
“Whereas for OEMs, if it’s only one site or a small portion of the customers seeing this issue, they’re not likely to start a whole change management process just to suit one customer’s need.”
Image: MASPRO
Kennard said MASPRO also has the advantage of understanding local conditions.
“Many OEMs are global companies that might not have the same local engineering presence as us and may rely on their expertise overseas; but mining conditions are vastly different from country to country,” he said.
“We intimately understand the environment in which our customers are operating, leading to engineered solutions tailored to the harsh conditions of the Australian mining industry.”
As MASPRO continues its expansion to serve Australian and international customers, the company has tripled the size of its engineering facility in Condobolin, New South Wales, in the last two years.
MASPRO has also recently established a similar-sized facility in Sydney to go alongside its existing distribution centres in Perth and Mount Isa. The company also has a new customer hub team based in Perth to better support its WA customers.
Kennard said with MASPRO’s operational capacity set up for growth, the company is now focused on expanding its customer base and broadening its product offerings.
With an expansive suite of solutions available for surface and underground drilling applications, MASPRO is now lending its expertise to load and haul, with engineered components and support available for machines such as Sandvik’s LH621 loader.
Above all, MASPRO is committed to driving greater machine uptime and availability to ensure mining companies can keep their machines on the park, meeting operational and production KPIs more of the time.
This feature appeared in the March 2024 issue of Australian Mining.