Aitik visit is a mind blowing experience for reader

by Nick Drew | Thu 08 May 2014

Aitik visit is a mind blowing experience for reader

The Aitik mine in Northern Sweden has been featured on this blog in the past, and indeed on numerous occasions in Steven Vale’s articles in Earthmovers Magazine. In this post yet another of our Swedish readers Uffe Dahlman gives his description of his visit to this breath-taking facility.

Aitik lies 15 kilometres outside of Gallivare in Northern Sweden. The mine which is owned and operated by Boliden, is Sweden’s largest mining site and is said to be the most productive mine in the world. According to 2012 statistics this copper mine produces 34 million tonnes of ore annually. From this ore they get 270,000 tons of chalcopyrite, 67,000 tons of copper, 51 tons of silver and 2 tons of gold. The plan in 2012 was to boost production of ore to around 40 million tons which I expect has now been achieved.

This opencast mine is 3 kilometres long, 1.1 kilometres wide and 450 metres deep. Opened in 1968 the mine employs around 680 members of staff and is the largest employer in the Gallivare municipality.

Commenting on his visit to the mine Uffe said, “Its actually hard to describe how it feels to visit this mine. Before the trip I had watched videos of the place on You Tube and Googled for photos of it on the internet, but nothing can prepare you for this breath-taking experience, if you like large machines and let’s face it, who doesn’t, then this place is heaven on earth!”

Seen above: Uffe is stood in front of the old Bucyrus shovel. Uffe continued, “I spoke to my friend about how to explain our visit and for her thoughts on it and we both came to the conclusion that you can’t describe the experience without using foul language!” Uffe said, “The mine is really huge, we saw a Volvo EC700 down in the pit, normally your reaction to a 70 ton excavator is like, wow that’s a mighty piece of equipment, but in this case we all just nodded our heads and wondered why the hell they have a mini digger down in the pit!”

The mine uses two P&H 4100 face shovels that weigh an impressive 1,300 tons and are equipped with 45 cubic metre buckets. When fully loaded each bucket weighs around 75 tons.

They also have a Bucyrus 495 that weighs 1500 tons and has the same size bucket as the other excavators. There is also an older P&H which was relocated to Aitik from one of Bolidens mines in Spain.

The mine also operates two hydraulic Komatsu PC5500 excavators and two Cat 994 wheeled loaders’ In Aitik the primary movers are CAT dumptruck’s, mainly consisting of 793’s, but when they purchase new ones they are now buying the larger 795F. At the time they have ten 795 and about twenty 793. The 793 carries a payload of 230 tons and the 795 about 100 tons more, so to boost production even more they have to buy some more 795 trucks. These larger trucks are expected to be delivered over the coming years as older trucks are replaced.

Every month the machines use 2.8 million litres of diesel, the dumptrucks average fuel consumption is around 220 litres per hour. Blasting takes place at the mine once a week, for this purpose they use around 1000 tons of explosives. The blast generally generates around 1.5 million tons of ore for the machines to move. There are four crushers on site and each one has the capacity to get through 3,000 tons of material per hour!

Seen above: The gang that "did it". From left to right: Kalle Petersson, Anton Svensson, Uffe Dahlman, Camilla Andersson, Björn Fredriksson. We thank Uffe for sharing his photos and thoughts on what appears to be a great place to visit. I for one would love to go for a look around one of these days.

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