UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 25, 2020. EVRAZ Holding’s Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Raspadskaya Mine completed its investment project meant to make the reinstallation of stoping equipment faster. As a result, miners at Coalface 6-6a carried out their task in a much safer manner and twice as fast, EVRAZ Holding’s PR Department reports.

‘The preparatory jobs and the reinstallation itself were done by Raspadskaya Mine’s Assembly, Disassembly, and Repair Department workers. The investment project took two years to complete. Raspadskaya Coal Company purchased an advanced set of appliances for RUB 300m for the purpose. The set comprised self-propelled Petitto Mule units and Sandvik pneumatic pullers. To make sure the extremely heavy equipment could get transported to the mine, a 2.4-kilometer-long concrete road had to get built under the ground,’ the company says.

The equipment used to get reinstalled from one working area to another with the help of hoisting gear and mounting blocks. The entire procedure took up to 112 days to complete; this time, the reinstallation was already over in 56 days. The new appliances have meant workers could stop using the not-so-accident-proof hoisting gear, which made the miners’ work safer. Raspadskaya Mine’s experience with speeding up the reinstallation process will get transferred to EVRAZ’s other member enterprises. For one, the new equipment is already being used to disassemble support units at Yerunakovskaya VIII Mine.