Yancoal Australia and WesTrac: A new era of machines for a new era of partnership
To celebrate 20 years of Yancoal’s Australia operations, WesTrac helped roll out a new fleet across Yancoal’s New South Wales sites, with sustainability and reliability front-of-mind.
WesTrac has delivered fleets of Cat trucks, excavators, drills, and other ancillary equipment to Yancoal’s sites around the country, to the point where 65% of the company’s fleet across Australia is Caterpillar®.
Most recently, WesTrac has worked on delivering a vast range of machines to two of Yancoal’s Tier-1 sites in New South Wales – Mount Thorley Warkworth (MTW) in the Hunter Valley and Moolarben near Mudgee.
As Yancoal Executive General Manager of Operations, David Bennett, explains, these two sites require reliable and robust machines for the open-cut operations:
“We need equipment to be reliable, we need equipment to be cost effective, and we need to be able to source parts for our equipment, whether it’s service kits or breakdown parts.”
Yancoal has invested in a variety of Cat machines and equipment over the years to keep its fleet updated.
This year, the company replaced its Cat 6050 Hydraulic Mining Shovel at Moolarben with the new Cat 6060 FS Hydraulic Mining Shovel.
Yancoal Group Asset Manager, Matt Staff, says:
“When we looked at the Cat 6060 and went and looked at other sites across New South Wales who operate that machine, it was decided the 6060 was best fit for Moolarben, The fuel burn reduction in that new generation 6060 was a benefit we looked at and made us go for the Cat product.”
Yancoal has also invested in a fleet of new Cat 794 Mining Trucks for its MTW site, becoming the first company to buy this model new in NSW.
Along with introducing new machines, Yancoal invested in Cat MineStar Fleet technology to ensure a holistic approach to fleet management.
Matt Staff says:
“We had a look at the MineStar product, with some of the automation we’re going towards, like with our drill fleet at Moolarben and MTW and obviously the Cat fleet that we have at that site, we thought the MineStar product, and having that partnership with Caterpillar at that site, would be a benefit instead of having another product.”
As WesTrac Mining Business Manager Craig Morris explains, the OEM had been working with Yancoal to find the best fleet management system for the Moolarben site:
“The best solution we came up with as a group was the full [Cat MineStar] fleet management system, which is a production and maintenance tool that helps them make sure the site is delivering what is required.”
Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/13032025/yancoal-australia-and-westrac-a-new-era-of-machines-for-a-new-era-of-partnership/