The team of highly trained engineers and thought-leaders at MASPRO strive to offer the best service and solutions to Australia’s mines.
Safety, reliability and productivity are the pillars of mining technology manufacturer MASPRO’s approach to providing solutions to the challenges in today’s resources sector.
“We’re passionate about manufacturing a quality product and we saw a gap in the hard-rock mining scene in Australia,” MASPRO managing director Greg Kennard told Australian Mining. “We pride ourselves on being able to deliver on innovation and collaboration with our clients, offering industry-leading engineering solutions for underground and open-pit mobile mining equipment.
“We have an experienced, agile team of engineers using cutting-edge technology with all their design and engineering projects. That allows them to get stuck into a problem and come up with solutions quickly and efficiently.”
Kennard described MASPRO as an enabler of the rapidly developing technology space. He said the company’s engineering maximises the operating hours of new technologies.
MASPRO engineers recently redesigned a rotation head for an open-pit surface drill for a client that wanted to extend the life of heads that were achieving 500–1500 hours. MASPRO worked with the client to create an upgraded version within a month, and the new head increased scheduled changeout intervals to 6000 hours.
Productivity and safety are big concerns in mining and MASPRO remains committed to working with clients to keep workers safe and operations running efficiently.
“We understand what their problems are,” Kennard said. “We look at specific problems our clients experience during real-life operations and redesign a solution to get a longer service life out of the product. We collaborate with the maintenance and safety teams on-site to design solutions that keeps everyone safe while also extending the lifecycles of the components we redesign.”
MASPRO engineers recently put these values into action in designing what they call the Development Drill Bolting upgrade 2.0.
This unit is designed to improve the capability of a development drill intended for the standard tunnelling market in Australia, and has been upgraded to better handle the rigours of meshing and bolting.
The MASPRO team designed a complete upgrade to the major components of the drill to mitigate against fatigue or failure, while also increasing safety features. A new redundancy feature was introduced into the MASPRO design to ensure the feed rail could not detach while being used for the meshing and bolting process.
“Maintaining a high level of customer service and being solutions-driven is what sets us apart from others,” Kennard said. “We partner with our customers to build lasting solutions that support their stringent operational targets.
“We aim to provide more durability, safety and extend the life of the products we design. By listening to our customers, our designs address the problems our customers face on and in the ground.”
MASPRO is looking towards the future. With plans to expand its footprint closer to its clients, the company is considering international opportunities in North America and South-East Asia.
According to Kennard, expanding the company’s offering is also a key objective for MASPRO, with research and development ramping up into improving several products.
“MASPRO’s focus continues to be on development drills and will expand to offering other mobile equipment,” Kennard said.
Kennard also discussed MASPRO’s manufacturing capability from its multiple manufacturing facilities, and its enduring commitment to pursuing the latest in technology.
“We’ve got robotic welders and robotic machine loaders, as well as next-generation quality inspection, including automated 3D metrology,” he said. “We’re riding the technology wave and seeing the value it can bring to the business and our customers, with continuous operations now a reality.”
For MASPRO, it always comes back to the customers. The company is driven to ensure it is providing the best products and service on the market coupled with the latest engineering capabilities that can tailor a solution to any challenge.
“With MASPRO, our customers are experiencing a more agile, flexible and reactive team,” Kennard said.
“We put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and deliver superior solutions quicker and more efficiently.”
This feature appeared in the October 2023 issue of Australian Mining.