A Look To Mining

A specialist in planetary drive solutions, Bonfiglioli has a wide offer for mining applications that includes track, travel and slew drives. For track drives in particular, Bonfiglioli has three main component families: the 700C, the F – suited for large mining excavators, bucket wheel excavators and surface miners – and the FP Series for jaw crushers.

According to Bonfiglioli, in the mining market the development of customer’s customized solutions is fundamental and, together with its customers, Bonfiglioli also develops the condition monitoring system. The company offers tailormade repair kits as well to reduce the investments and the complexity of the repairing activity.

Bonfliglioli said, the major trends in mining are electrification and IoT linked to service and predictive maintenance activities. The company is investing since many years in the electrification and counts on a long experience in the production of e-motors for the industrial segment and for e-mobility.

After Sales services is another important aspect for this market, where keeping machines in operation as much as possible and reducing downtimes in the mines are top priorities. Bonfiglioli observed that for some operating companies, there is a tendency to repair more, instead of exchanging the units and the trend now is to spread requests for quotations worldwide without limiting it to their own country or to the next trader.

Considering the current market situation, with the pandemic that hit many parts of the world, Bonfliglioli remarked how areas like South America, India and Europe are of course suffering with the crisis. There is also a high pressure on the mining market in Chile due to local political riots. One of the main challenges for Bonfiglioli in the last few months was the shutdown of several mining companies, so that orders for parts and repair items were affected as well.

On the other hands, the company noted that China is recovering very fast from the lockdown and is growing with an impressive speed; big investments on projects like the New Silk Road are tremendously increasing the demand on mining and construction machines.