If your company’s focus is directed towards an improved impact on the environment by reducing water, electricity, and chemical usage, whilst focusing on a better operational expenditure that will have a positive impact on the bottom line, then let Loesche be your next technology partner to achieve these goals.

A family-owned business, Loesche established itself by inventing and patenting the first spring loaded vertical roller mill over 114 years ago.

1935 saw the first mill sold into the cement industry with further development of the mills being done continuously to handle this growing market.

In the 1980s Loesche became the market leaders in vertical roller mill technology – moving from coal, cement, raw meal, and clinker grinding to minerals and ores.

Since this development and the sale of mills into the ore industry, Loesche has modified and developed its mill to be even more robust. Today it has the capabilities of milling even the hardest and most complicated ores found, giving a wide range of product fineness.

A good example is the first phosphate ore mill, being commissioned in South Africa in 2000. The phosphate ore has a bond work index of 25 kW/t, the mill is a LM 50.4 producing a product of P85–425 microns at a rate of 650 tph.

Major maintenance is done once a year where wear liners are replaced.

Over the last two decades, Loesche’s mill installation footprint has grown substantially to include numerous examples of ore mills in the manganese, gold, copper matte, phosphates, bentonite, limestone, dolomite, titanium slag, barium ferrite, felspar and clay sectors.

The start of something truly great

The introduction of the VRM (vertical roller mill) into the ore industry has put Loesche on a significant growth trajectory.

Consequently, 2022 will be recorded as a standout year as the company proceeds with its first design and build of a complete comminution circuit for a copper nickel mine.

The process design has a capacity of 12 Mtpa. A lack of a suitable electricity close by and water being scarce threatened the mine’s existence until the mining house looked at alternative equipment and approached Loesche to work closely with them on their study.

“We made this project viable by producing a dry circuit with a low energy requirement – running on renewable energy utilising solar during the day and wind at night,” says Christian Gerhard, MD, Loesche South Africa.

“The dedicated ore department at Loesche has made this project viable, focusing our efforts on producing a new concept of milling in the mining industry. Our efforts have been rewarded after years of research and understanding of what is required by miners to gain or retain profitability.”

To aid customers further, Loesche has a mobile ore grinding test plant which can produce product continuously for downstream testing purposes, operating under laboratory conditions.

Collected data is correlated to assess the best possible solution for the mine. Depending on the ore type, Loesche can also offer in house speciality products such as air cyclones, state-of-the-art classifiers, and dry magnetic separation.

To assist the industry’s growth objectives, Loesche can offer numerous services such as pre-feasibility, feasibility and bankable studies and has not only focused on larger projects but has also developed various plant options to suit all levels of mining from the start-up junior miner to small-scale deposit owners.

Loesche offers a containerised compact milling plant with options right up to multiple circuits to achieve the throughput capacities required. The plant can easily be relocated once the deposit has been depleted. Loesche has also kept up with the ever-growing need for artificial intelligence and has an AI support system which runs the complete circuit.

The Digital Ready 4.0 package has modules that run the plant, consistently monitoring the process. The AI adjusts mill settings automatically to always ensure the best possible power usage and throughput capacity.

Complementing this is a health system module predicting potential failure before it happens and an automatic spare parts handling module.

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