Efficient upgrade ensures optimal hoist performance at Boliden Garpenberg

A successful major upgrade of an ABB friction hoist at Boliden's Garpenberg mine will continue to ensure the very highest levels of productivity and system availability.

Boliden Garpenberg is the world’s most productive underground zinc mine. At the heart of their operations are two ABB mine hoists, one production hoist and one personnel hoist, ensuring high levels of productivity and reliability. Since they were first commissioned in 2014 the hoists have played a key role in increasing Boliden’s annual production rate from 1.4 to 3 million tonnes.

After ten years of reliable production, the production hoist needed a major upgrade to ensure continued high levels of performance. As a long-term partner to Boliden, ABB was tasked to perform the upgrade, which affected all aspects of the mine hoist system: electrical and mechanical components as well as shaft equipment. 

All in all, the upgrade included: drive upgrade from ACS6000 to ACS6080, AMZ motor replacement to spare motor, replacement of main bearings on drum shaft and manufacturing of special lifting tools and support frames as well as electrical and mechanical engineering, installation, and commissioning.

“With the mine hoists playing a crucial role in Boliden’s operations, minimizing downtime and ensuring safe project execution during upgrade was prioritized”, says Lars Andersson, Project Manager at ABB Process Industries. “The hoist was taken out of production on November 3, and we had it up running again two weeks later which is an incredibly quick turnaround.”

ABB is the only OEM delivering complete mine hoist systems based on customized designs for electrical and mechanical equipment. Acting as a single point of contact for the customer during the upgrade facilitated smooth collaboration and project execution.

“The mine hoist plays an integral part in our operations and ensuring continued high performance is a priority for us. We are satisfied with the close cooperation we have had with ABB during the implementation phase to ensure a quick turnaround", says Pär Göting, General Manager at Boliden Garpenberg. “We have been working together for decades and this is just another testament to culture of collaboration that has established the Swedish mining industry as a global leader.”

Equipment downtime is related to high costs. By completing within the quick span of two weeks, ABB’s service team were able to mitigate this. Additionally, since the upgrade the production hoist delivers 96 percent equipment availability, ensuring continued productive and reliable operations for Boliden. 

With over 130 years experience, we invented new technologies and improved them, every day. Because miners’ safety depends on them. ABB is today the market leader in the segment with over 1 000 hoisting solutions delivered worldwide.

ABB has the unique capability to design, supply, install and provide long-term service and support of entire mine hoist mechanical and electrical systems. We supply friction hoists as well as drum hoists of various types. We also supply the shaft equipment necessary for productive hoisting processes.

ABB mine hoist solutions provide low life cycle cost, high reliability and system availability, short project execution time and a single source of supply for the complete system, including service and spare parts.