The project, which started in 2022, aims at dewatering the tailings produced by the exploitation of the Goro Nickel mine in order to store them in the form of sludge.
Sarens has participated in the project by performing several heavy lifting and transport operations using a CC2800 Crawler Crane.
The cost of the project is estimated at 254 million euros, and its duration is expected to be 3 years, with the objective of being commissioned in 2024
The construction of the Lucy Project at the Goro Nickel plant will be a major boost to local employment, with the creation of 500 jobs for manufacturing and 200 for plant maintenance.
The project will implement an innovative process that will treat and store the waste produced by the exploitation of the Goro mine for the extraction of nickel. The hydrometallurgical process required to operate the mine generates wet tailings in the form of sludge, which is then stored in a tailings pond. The tailings deposit is called KO2. The park will reach full capacity by the end of 2024, so it was necessary to find a new way to store the mill tailings, and the construction of the Lucy project was the solution.
Sarens, world leader in heavy lifting, engineered transport and crane rental solutions, has contributed to the assembly of this project by supplying cranes with high lifting capacities for performing lifting operations in the construction of the desiccant processing facilities.
For this job, the Sarens team chose the CC2800 crane as the main unit due to its high load capacity of up to 600 tons and the convenience resulting from the fact that the machine was located in New Caledonia due to a previous project, so it did not require extensive travel. Having this crane greatly facilitated the heavier lifts, which were originally intended to be carried out using two smaller cranes and tandem lifts. The configuration had to be changed 3 times to adapt it to the needs of the project.
For the remaining tasks, 3 other cranes had to be imported from Sarens Australia, with less lifting capacity (90/100 and 250T mobile crane). These arrived on the island by ship and were transported by vessels to the construction site port. Sarens worked on the project from May 2022 until March of the following year.
Connor Happer (Engineer on the project) explained some of the main complications: "We were working in a remote location, a small island in the Pacific with limited resources and availability (2 hours from the nearest town), so any equipment breakdowns involving replacement of manufacturer specific spare parts meant we had to source the replacement part from Australia or Europe. Extra effort has been made to reduce downtime and project delay".
After the option of opening a new wet tailing site was ruled out in 2015, the idea of a tailings dewatering solution was put forward as the most coherent, as it reduces the environmental impact of the plant and benefits local employment. The process consists of passing the wet waste through filter presses that will dry it into dry materials that can be transported by truck and stored in piles. This concept saves storage space and is also an ecological gain, as the treatment of the plant waste, which will be solidified in the process, ensures safer storage and reduces the risks associated with retention ponds.
The associated infrastructure for storing the dry tailings will be located behind the existing dam (KO2), while new storage spaces for the dry tailings are being built by creating tailings dumps at a new site (KO4).
The project has come to fruition following the completion of the sale of the mining operation by the Brazilian company Vale to Prony Resources, the current operator of the plant and the main driver of LUCY, the largest private investment in the island in the last three years.
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