While the recent price spike in the tungsten market may have hit the headlines due to the metal’s use in the defence sector, the move has also had an acute impact on mining.
Used as a raw material for tungsten carbide bits in drilling, among other applications, the commodity underwrites the development and production metres mines make. While the drills and raiseborers are often viewed as the workhorses in this equation, the reality is that the quality and performance of inserts can make or break these operations.
Sandvik, as an end-to-end supplier and consumer of tungsten carbide, knows this well.
It controls the entire tungsten carbide production process from mine to final insert and drill bit – starting with scheelite tungsten ore mining at its Wolfram operation in Austria. At the other end of the scale, it has advanced recycling units for tungsten carbide, both in regional mining hubs as well as at customer sites.
Sandvik also has a state-of-the-art carbide facility in Västberga, southwest of Stockholm, which acts as a hub for rock tools carbide inserts production as well as Sandvik’s global R&D centre for cemented carbide technology. Sandvik Machining companies, Coromant, Seco and Walter, also use tungsten carbide in their own products.
“This makes us a fairly big player in the market when it comes to cemented carbide production, consumption, R&D and innovation,” Rickard Andreasson, VP of Services for Sandvik Rock Tools, says.
It is this mindset that has the division embarking on a new marketing campaign titled: “Every gram of carbide counts.”
The reasons behind this are not only the price for the raw material – which has increased almost 800% in the space of a year – but also the inherent scarcity of tungsten carbide sources.
“The ability to supply tungsten carbide bits comes with significant value in the mining sector at the moment,” Andreasson says. “If we take the gold market, for instance, which has been looking to make the most of high prices by upping productivity on site, mining companies are in drastic need of more carbide bits to sustain their production momentum.”
For other more ‘price-sensitive’ segments of the mining market, it is the expense associated with these tungsten-intensive consumables that has Sandvik’s messaging hitting home.
“If we look at our premium PowerCarbide® grades, for instance, the ability to outlast competitor bits, as well as drill more metres at quicker rates, has more companies looking to our offering from a total cost of ownership perspective,” Andreasson says.
In top hammer applications, the PowerCarbide Self Hardening SH70 grade, for instance, has demonstrated more than double the drill bit service life, helping customers reduce downtime and lower total drilling costs. PowerCarbide grades have also been found to offer 20% to over 30% faster drilling rates compared with conventional carbides.
This is even before one factors in the ability for Sandvik to offer customers scheduled resharpening of these carbide inserts with its own grinding equipment. The OEM estimates this can more than halve the cost per metre compared with drilling to destruction, with the process able to be carried out around 5-10 times. This can extend total drill bit service life by up to 10 times while maintaining penetration rates and drilling efficiency, Sandvik claims.
Then there is the recycling element to consider, which has been on the company’s agenda for several years.
Petter Bengtsson, Director of Marketing and Communications for Sandvik Rock Tools, says: “This technology, which only requires us to send the carbide inserts from site – rather than the whole bit – has resulted in an up to 93% reduction in the freight emissions associated with transport compared to the previous process.”
Since the company launched a recycling opt-out scheme in 2023, the amount of recycled carbide inserts has increased, with extraction units now in operation across all continents and major mining hubs, according to Andreasson.
Sandvik doesn’t have a 100% captive supply – both virgin (mined) and recycled – of the carbide raw material, but its increasing control on inputs allows it more supply chain access than the average carbide producer, which is increasingly important in today’s market.
All of this has Sandvik Rock Tools in a leading position to supply the mining sector with the carbides they need to achieve the metre metrics the market demands of them.
The post Miners counting on Sandvik for carbide appeared first on International Mining.