The machinery upgrading programme at the Baganuur deposit was officially inaugurated at a ceremony on December 12 morning at the mine headquarter with Wagner Asia Equipment LLC formally handing over four CAT777D heavy-load dump trucks and one D10T bulldozer to the mining company. Baganuur supplies coal to the power plants of Ulaanbaatar city, where half the total population of Mongolia resides.A complete technical upgradation at the mine was necessary if Baganuur JSC was to continue meeting 70 per cent of the capital city’s total coal consumption. The equipment supplied by Wagner Asia formed the very first phase of the programme.
The sale was fully financed by the Government of Mongolia. Wagner Asia offered a discount of between $400,000 and $500,000 for the deal. M.Otgonbayar, Executive Director of Baganuur, revealed that together the five items cost more than MNT10 billion. He added that the new dump trucks will increase the soil removal capacity of the mine by 20 per cent.
In his speech at the ceremony, B.Battur, Sales Director at Wagner Asia Equipment LLC, said, “We are glad to supply four new CAT777D dump trucks of 100 tons of capacity and one D10T bulldozer to Baganuur deposit. In 1997, Wagner Asia supplied 20 dump trucks to Baganuur for the first time and 15 years later, 13 of these are still in operation. Right now, you can see a dump truck that has run a million kilometers parked next to a brand new one. We would like to acknowledge the success of the operators as well as the high capacity and productivity of Caterpillar equipment.”
Operators at Baganuur were full of praise for the quality of Caterpillar products and said these can be adapted easily and well to work in the harsh conditions of Mongolia. One of them, O.Erdenebileg, said as he showed the metre of an old dump truck, “This has done one million kilometers and so we now replace it with a new one. We would like to gift this old one to the Baganuur museum.” When the operators received their dump trucks 15 years ago, they promised to operate them for a million kilometers, and they have kept their word. The close of the ceremony was marked by the experienced operators driving way the new Caterpillar dump trucks in line.
This is just the beginning of the upgradation programme. In a welcome move, the Government has returned the licence of the Baganuur deposit to Baganuur JSC which was previously a privately-owned company. The next step would be to confirm the resource amount of the deposit to ensure that operations will continue for a long time in the future.
Wagner Asia Equipment LLC has said it looks forward to having a long-term cooperation with Baganuur during its upgradation programme. As for Baganuur JSC, it has two options to access funds for further upgradation: selling fresh shares or borrowing on easy terms.