New bucket wheel excavators for NLC in Neyveli, India

Neyveli Lignite Corporation Ltd (NLC) has inaugurated two new state-of-the-art bucket wheel excavators with an operating capacity of up to 6800 cubic metres per hour for their Mines-II Project.

Bucket-Wheel Excavators

Project completed five months ahead of the schedule

The giant crawler mounted 1400L excavators each of them weighing close to 2,600 tons will be used in NLC Mines-II area for removing the overburden over the lignite deposit. The maximum cutting height of the machine is 30 meters. 

This is the first time in the NLC history that two excavators of such large size were inaugurated  at the same time. It is to the credit of the joint effort of the project officials from NLC along with the project management of TAKRAF and their subcontractors to complete the project five months ahead of the tight schedule. TAKRAF India executed the project on a turnkey basis utilising the trusted technology of their principals TAKRAF GmbH from Germany. The continuous mining technologies for open pit mines developed by Germans have been successfully used by NLC for several decades now, providing the advantages of low cost of continuous lignite mining.

The new bucket wheel excavators were inaugurated on 5th February in the Mine-II site by Shri B. Surender Mohan, Chairman cum Managing Director, NLC, in the presence of other NLC Directors, officials and employees of the contractor and his subcontractors as well as guests and press representatives.