Giving “excellent” and “very good” as their ratings for 2011 and the year to date in 2012, the Top 2 makers of rail car dumpers, rail wagon unloaders, or tipplers as they are variously called, are working hard to keep up with demand. Metso Minerals and ThyssenKrupp Fordertechnik GmbH (TKF) are storming along, setting a blistering pace that defies any talk of double-dip recession. Their main rivals can only continue to bid in the hope that the Big Two won’t be able to satisfy all of the global demands for these big ticket items – a single rotary dumper and train positioner could cost from USD6 to USD10 million installed. With its group office based in Helsinki, Finland, Metso is the world’s undisputed No. 1 with more rail wagon unloaders in service than anyone else. The company’s Manager of Product Support, Tim Sexton, says from his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania office that business for rotary dumpers has been and is “very good.” Rivals would most likely term his order book as “something to dream about” as it details over a dozen major projects spread from British Columbia in Canada, to China, Venezuela and Australia.
Prospects “pretty good”
“When talking about the rotary car dumper business there has not been a recession, except for the domestic utility area,” says Sexton. “The prospects for the future continue to look pretty good.” The world No. 2 in the rail wagon dumper business, ThyssenKrupp of Germany, has had “an excellent last year and so far this year,” according to Dr Wei Ye, Vice President Project Sales. “Our order intake is up 20% making it one of our best years ever.” ThyssenKrupp has orders in the pipeline from Russia and China and projects underway in Peru, Indonesia and Brazil. Other major companies in the Top 4 – Heyl & Patterson and Aumund Schade – are highly active, but without the busy order book success as yet. “We finished up several machines last year, but did not get a lot of orders,” says Harry Edelman, Executive Vice President of the Pittsburgh-based Heyl & Patterson, which has been making and maintaining rail car dumpers since the 1940s. “So far in 2012, business has been picking up.” Edelman says “a lot of importing or exporting ports are spending dollars again.” For him the market represents “interesting times, you just have to learn how to adapt.” Heyl & Patterson actually hired its way through the US recession and Edelman says the company is handling a “serious level of inquiries” for its rail car dumpers.
Tippler office
Another major player, the Netherlands-based Schade, part of the Aumund Group, has been operating an office for rail wagon tippler sales in Bristol, England, for over a year and is starting to sense results are close. “We’ve been working very hard in our first year in business, but orders are a little thin on the ground,” says Matthew Jones, General Manager, Wagon Unloading Systems, for Schade. “We are still very much the new boy on the block, but we anticipate success in two or three projects in the coming weeks.” There’s been “lots and lots of feasibility studies” and Jones says some projects have been in the works for four or five years, although others initiated as recently as 12 months ago are now going ahead. Schade recently commissioned a dumper in Russia.
Global trends
Increasing world coal sales are part of the reason for a vibrant rail wagon dumper market, but that’s not all. Metso Vice President Global Sales, David Hicken, also reports from his UK office that demand for rail car dumpers in the iron ore industry, particularly in Australia and West Africa, is also strong and likely to stay that way for the next few years. On the West Coast of North America, the three Canadian coal export terminals are all expanding capacity and two are installing new tandem rail car dumpers supplied by Metso. Westshore Terminals in Port Metro Vancouver and Ridley Terminals in the Port of Prince Rupert to the north are both in the process of installing new twin rotary dumpers to help boost their capacity. At Westshore, the busiest coal export terminal in North America, three Metso train positioners are also being installed this October, including two exit positioners for the first time to help improve the unloading efficiency of CP Rail’s mid-locomotive staged coal trains. The six-week long shutdown sees the removal of an existing single rotary dumper to be replaced by a twin rotary, giving the terminal side-by-side tandem dumper sets. The first of the exit train positioners will be completed on the existing twin dumper by the end of July and the other entry and exit positioners will be installed as part of the new twin dumper project in the third quarter of the year.
Sales successes
Metso has the big order book and sales successes. Sexton lists hot spots as Australia, Brazil and India for iron ore dumper systems and North America and China for coal car dumping projects. Metso set the pace in China with a quad in-line dumper at the Port of Caofeidian, the first time in the world to operate four dumpers in a row. Most common usage is for tandem (two in line) or a twin (side-by-side) dumpers and Metso lists such sales for FMG at Anderson Point, BHP at Boodarie, Rio Tinto at Cape Lambert, and BHP on Finucane Island all in Australia; a replacement dumper for CVG Ferrominera at Oronoco in Venezuela; a tandem dumper for Vale in Sao Luis, Brazil; and in China a C-frame dumper for Jintag at Taijin, a twin for Haunghu Port, and three triple dumpers and a tandem to add to the growing mass of dumper lines at Caofeidian; plus the two tandems soon to be installed in Canadian West Coast coal export ports.
ThyssenKrupp has two high performance, 40-car-per-hour, tandem dumpers being installed in Porto Sudeste in Brazil for commissioning later this year; another two-car dumper for iron ore producer Brazil CSN also to be in service by year’s end; a smaller side discharge car dumper for unloading copper concentrate at around 1,000 tonnes per hour in the Port of Callao in Peru; and two tandem dumpers for the Tarahan Coal Terminal in Indonesia in what is a breakthrough contract for TKF in that country.
Innovations
Faced with longer trains with sometimes heavier, larger cars, rail wagon dumper makers have had to be continuously innovative with their product design and manufacture, often with custom made solutions to project demands. Quad setups, triples and multiple side-by-side dumpers are no longer uncommon around the globe in iron ore or coal handling ports. Metso has turned to component finite element analysis so it can now offer a design fatigue life for its dumpers of over four million dump cycles. Heyl & Patterson has
been busy perfecting ways of having its dumpers fit into containers for break bulk type delivery, says Edelman. Containers are governed by weight, but even the dumper barrel can be broken down into pieces for delivery and bolted back together on site. “It’s a little bit more work in fabrication on site, but it’s definitely the way to go,” he adds.
Wary eye
The Big 4 are also keeping a wary eye on China and its ability to reverse engineer and manufacture equipment, including rotary rail car dumpers. “China continues to look for intellectual property it can copy,” says Edelman from Heyl & Patterson. “It is something we are definitely worried about, but, these are low cost copies made with minimal understanding of how to customise the equipment or provide much by way of after-market service.” For ThyssenKrupp’s Dr Ye, the competition between Chinese suppliers and overseas suppliers is “quite tough” but while the Chinese are beginning to copy machines, any new developments in the higher capacity rail car dumpers offered by the major manufacturers are usually not easily replicated. Schade’s Matthew Jones notes that in most high prestige projects, specifications and reliability are proving more important than price. “In any case,” he adds, “the Chinese are not significantly cheaper for top end machines.”
Lower volumes
If high volumes aren’t crucial to a venture’s success, there are a growing number of companies that offer cheaper, less complex rail car unloaders. These shallow pit dumpers can unload any dry, free-flowing material usually using bottom dumping (opening gates) rail car stock.
Typical of these manufacturers is Ashross Mobile Unloading Systems, based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, which has had six sales of railcar unloaders so far this year. The huge advantage, says Managing Partner, Lloyd Ash, is that while the deep-pit variety rotary barrel car dumpers can cost from USD15 to USD20 million, his unloaders range from USD850,000 to USD1.4 million depending on capacity. One recent sale in Philadelphia was for an unloader capable of a throughput of 2,000 to 3,500 tonnes per hour. Ashross takes out 50 feet of track to create a shallow pit and its rail car unloader machine bridges the gap. Other machines have recently been sold to a Detroit Energy, BP, and Kinder Morgan conglomerate in Chicago for two end-to-end rail car unloaders; another to Ferry Bridge east of Leeds in England; and another to Tampaco Bay in Guymas, Mexico, for a rail car unloader and a truck unloader that can also load petroleum coke onto rail cars.
World-wide bids
Ashross is currently bidding on rail car unloader projects in Canada, Venezuela, Australia Alaska, the Persian Gulf, Scotland, and Africa offering its series of RUM – Railcar Unloading Machines –in a variety of models and formats. Some are capable of unloading a 100-tonne car every seven minutes, while others, including a mobile unloader model that can be moved from site to site, can manage a more modest four to six cars an hour. The 20-year-old company even has a continuous discharge railcar unloader in development and is looking for customer to help partner the first to market. Ashross expects the machine will cost around USD2.5 million and be able to unload at a rate of about 4,000 to 6,000 tonnes an hour using chains and belts under the machine on a live floor that travels at the same speed as the train.
Huge demand
Another Utah manufacturer of portable rail car unloaders, Cambelt International Corp, of Salt Lake City, has been in business for 30 years and can’t keep up with demand for its mobile, push-around model. “We can’t keep this model in stock,” says Clay Hawkes, Mechanical Engineer and Sales Rep for Cambelt. “They sell as fast as we can make them.” The rail car unloaders handle materials such as carbon black, cement clinker, alumina, zinc oxide, pet food, pet coke and other minerals such as their particles are smaller than is under ¾ of an inch. The unloaders are totally enclosed and have minimal pit requirements and can handle up to 160 tonnes per hour on a unique molded belt. Another in this low volume rail wagon dumping market hails from in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, where Telestack Bulk Material Handling builds mobile loading and unloading equipment for rail wagons. Established in 1999, the company offers a complete range of mobile bulk handling equipment including the rail car unloading machines. It boasts sales all over the world – from the Americas to Siberia and even New Zealand – and has its machines busy moving aggregate, biomass, coal and other ores.