With almost 16,000 lives lost amid widespread devastation, getting Japan back on its feet became the consuming national priority. Somewhere on that list, was the rebuilding of ports and power plants, which lay in ruins in what was later described as the costliest natural disaster in world history. Equipment was a mangled mess of twisted metal. Getting industry back on its feet was a task that saw IHI Transport Machinery Co Ltd right at the heart of the work renewing five sets of continuous shipunloaders (CSUs) at severely damaged coal handling plants. One of the world’s leading makers of bucket-type continuous shipunloaders, IHI stepped up concentrating on the job at home and is only now moving on full-heartedly to business opportunities in bulk material handling elsewhere. “We worked devotedly for this earthquake disaster reconstruction and finally completed the recovery projects last year after more than two years from the day the disaster happened,” says IHI Senior Manager, Overseas Sales Department, Masao Akamatsu. In his view the current global market trend is for increasing emphasis on providing post sales service covering the entire working life of a CSU and that’s what IHI pledges for its customers.
Revolutionary
Not surprisingly, after its extensive recovery work in Japan, IHI’s research and development department has been busy and has come up with a new design for a revolutionary seismic isolation mechanism to secure the stability of its CSUs in any future earthquake. For most other CSU makers such as Germany rivals ThyssenKrupp Industrial Solutions GmbH and Forderanlagen Magdeburg (FAM), Korea’s Doosan Heavy Industries, Italy’s Tenova Group, China’s ZPMC, and continuous barge unloader specialists Heyl & Patterson and Metso Minerals in North America, the past year has seen the usual scramble for business in a world market finally awakening from years of recession. Some, like Tenova with its patented articulated digging foot, have big CSU contracts about to be announced, but couldn’t reveal details at time of writing. Others, like ThyssenKrupp and its bulk handling business unit in Rohrbach in Germany have much to talk about in a market that seems to be more buoyant than usual in 2014 with growing inquiries. Following the placement of CSUs at a new Guangzhou City Zhujiang power plant back in 1994, ThyssenKrupp won a June 2012 contract to supply and installation of two further units as the power plant began its Phase 2 expansion. Delivery was completed by the end of 2013 and commercial operation was set to start in February 2014.
China successes
For Dr Wei Ye, ThyssenKrupp’s Vice President Sales, the Chinese contract underscored the faith and satisfaction in the German company’s bulk material handling equipment which he says has earned them 75% of market share. The two new CSUs can unload at rates up to 1,600 tonnes per hour, working ship sizes up to 70,000 deadweight tonnes with future prospects of being able to unload ships up to 100,000 dwt. The contract adds to ThyssenKrupp’s past successes in China where it now has more than 60 machines – including CSUs, coal car dumpers, shiploaders, and stacker-reclaimers – in service at coal ports and power plants. Dr Ye puts the growing success in China down to ThyssenKrupp’s extensive experience, the excellent performance of CSUs already in service, the long lifetime and high availability of those machines, and reliable technical services to keep the machines up and running. While it signed no CSU contracts in 2013, ThyssenKrupp is currently working on CSU inquiries from at least five coal-fired power plants in Southeast Asia including Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and China. In his view, the low world price for thermal coal – recently in the USD70 to D80 range per tonne – is acting as a catalyst for further power plant development, particularly in comparison to the higher cost of nuclear, sonar, or wind power development.
Similar story
The story is much the same at FAM where Director of Sales, Ulrich Schneider, reports no new recent contracts for CSUs at a time when his company in general is signing some of the biggest contracts for other equipment in its history in a variety of industrial sectors. FAM has placed five bucket-type CSUs throughout Asia in recent years and is actively chasing new inquiries, although Schneider says the cement industry queries are muted with no new investments just plant extensions on the horizon. From Japan, IHI has also found the Southeast Asia market for CSUs to its liking and has completed a two machine project for the largest steel mill in Taiwan for Dragon Steel Corp, part of the China Steel Group. That brought to four units that IHI has provided for the steel mill company. The CSUs are capable of unloading iron ore at a rate of 3,000 tonnes per hour and coal at 2,100 tph. In Vietnam, IHI is supplying two CSUs in 2014 and 2015 of similar capacities as the Taiwan units for the Formosa Ha Tinh Vietnam Integrated Steel Project. The Formosa Plastic Group project is ambitious, says IHI’s Akamatsu, and is the first mega scale integrated steel mill in the Southeast Asian region. The two-phase project will be at 7 million tonnes of crude steel in its current first phase and will increase to 20 million tonnes of crude steel in its second phase. In Korea, CSU maker Doosan is poised to take advantage of any global economic rebound and in his New Year’s message, the group Chairman, Yongmaan Park, talked of being ready to harvest the fruits from the recovery this year. “Since we don’t have much time left before the recovery cycle will commence, we must spur ourselves to achieve even more and outpace other global top-tier companies,” he said.
Barge unloaders
As the smaller cousins of the huge CSUs, continuous barge unloaders (CBUs) serve the vital river traffic of the world’s waterways, battling their arch enemy grab cranes. In North America, with its myriad of inland waterways, the big names are Heyl & Patterson and Metso Minerals when it comes to CBUs. Heyl & Patterson Executive Vice President, Harry Edelman, is intrigued with a possible developing trend around the world centering on what he calls the Mississippi style barge, particularly when starting from scratch in developing countries. Which would be good news for H&P but so far it has produced “some nibbles but no bites” when it comes to solid inquiries. H&P installed and commissioned two CBUs for a Baton Rouge LA grain operation last year and two more are being assembled now for a New Orleans coal plant for commissioning this summer. Edelman remains optimistic about future CBU trends even if the barge unloaders “are not machines you sell daily.” Worldwide demand is not a great number when it comes to CBU sales, but he is heartened by a few recent international inquiries. “We still see our design as a U.S. design but there are people looking into using this Mississippi style barge concept.”
Too durable
Part of the problem for CBU manufacturers like H&P is that the machines are highly durable and don’t need replacing for 25 to 40 years. “We’ve never really replaced one yet, just installed new booms and upgraded parts . . . they’re just too durable,” Edelman says. Meanwhile, one of the big guns in CSU manufacture has also had success with a CBU contract. ThyssenKrupp’s Dr Ye reports that the company’s chain bucket elevator type continuous barge unloader won out over grab type barge unloaders in a multi-faceted contract for boiler plant project for Pupuk Kaltim at a fertiliser complex in Kalimantan in Indonesia which began commercial operation last year. The contract also included a circular stacker and side scraper reclaimer, domed storage and a covered conveyor belt system for the German company. ThyssenKrupp is also reported to have its eye on sales in North America.
&n
bsp;