Shaking up global mining – Haver & Boecker Niagara

At CONEXPO-CONAGG 2026 in Las Vegas, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore met with Karen Thompson, President of global screening major Haver & Boecker Niagara – to talk through its market position and its differentiators. The company’s base is in St Catharines, Ontario with sales offices and facilities on every continent. It is part of global group Haver & Boecker OHG, headquartered in Oelde, Germany. 

One of the technologies highlighted at the event was its digital and analytics offering. “I certainly think our diagnostics capabilities – especially Pulse Condition Monitoring – are recognised as a world class tool by a lot of our mining customers. The upsides are many – reduced unplanned downtime, more efficient repairs during scheduled maintenance and other aspects such as being able to check the effect of new media on a screen’s performance. So, we are known already for our ability to bring value through predictability of maintenance on our screening equipment and making sure that the machines are running at their optimised maximum production power.”

To collect all data from the body and drive components, Pulse CM is equipped with a gateway that can connect with up to 20 wireless sensors, within a radius of up to 75 m. Using a cellular signal or Wi-Fi from the plant, it will send all data to the Haver & Boecker Niagara cloud. The sensor configurations are customisable and placed on both the body and bearings of the vibrating screen. Unlike Pulse Vibration Analysis, Pulse CM can analyse trends over time using predictive data and artificial intelligence to assist with maintenance and production planning.  This prevents unwanted downtime or even catastrophic failures. 

Mining screen real time diagnostics is no longer seen as an optional extra but a vital tool to reduce OPEX

Thompson said that in mining real time screen analytics is something that is today much more standard with screens fitted with sensors in factory, as opposed to an optional extra. Especially with mines becoming lower grade – she says these tools have the ability to make or break a screening circuit when it comes to OPEX. Retrofitting to existing screens remains a big market as well, and Haver applies the technology both to its own units and to competitor models. “Customers came to realise swiftly that the payback time can be very quick. Just one unscheduled bearing change, for example, on a large screen is a big issue. Not to mention loss of product separation quality in a faulty screen and the effect that can have downstream.”

Thompson also highlighted Haver & Boecker Niagara exciters as being leading in the market – in terms of their power and fundamental design; and this includes exciters up to the 45.894 kgmm-150.459 kgmm HB150 – the largest in the world. Again, in addition to being used on Haver screens their dominance is being shown by replacements on competitor units. This multi-brand service across the board to screening customers also applies to screen refurbs and rebuilds – thanks to Haver’s experience combined with its world leading screen workshops such as Pedro Leopoldo and Parauapebas which together cover the southern and northern Brazilian mining regions respectively. Major upgrades also provide another opportunity for customers to benefit from the addition of the latest available technologies and components. 

When it comes to mining customers – they span not just the expected big markets like iron ore, copper and coal – Haver has had major success in the oil sands, plus industrial minerals markets like potash and phosphate where Thompson said there is also a trend towards higher production capacities and larger screening units.  

Haver is also known for its ability to customise screens for specific customer applications, which is some cases has led to development of entirely new screening technologies. The N-Class is an eccentric inclined screen built to meet demand in the Brazil market with an advanced four-bearing design that minimises structural vibration and maintains constant g-force, despite fluctuating material feed rates. Before this development, screening involved washing the ore with water to remove fines. Driving this is the fact that the process has changed so that sinter plants are using higher grade Direct Shipping Ore haematite material even up to 65-67% Fe – and this meant a classification change as well as the sinter feed is no longer -6.3 mm, it is more like -16 mm and the fines go for sintering along with the main feed.   

IM Editorial Director Paul Moore at CONEXPO 2026 with Haver & Boecker Niagara President, Karen Thompson

To deliver an N-Class solution for this natural moisture screening required an increase in the screen acceleration ie the rate of change of velocity from 4G up to 5.5G. It was also necessary to develop a new polyurethane screen media that fit well with the application to be able to handle the higher contained moisture and avoid pegging. The result was Ty-Deck Ultra – which features H-shaped openings made up of individual strips of polyurethane. Each opening is separated by two independent extensions parallel to each other. The strips vibrate independently to increase material acceleration, improving material separation and cleanliness. It is effectively self-cleaning. That dry process, using the natural moisture in the ore is also significant in terms of a move away from wet tailings not just in Brazil but around the world due to the risks inherent in larger wet tailings impoundments. 

Thompson argues that Haver’s success is partly due to the fact that it looks at all aspects of the screen application – the nature of the material itself, the action of the machine and G-forces, the screening media, the analytics – all of it is considered together. Another strength is the company’s R&D capabilities both in St Catharines but also Haver Engineering in Germany and its cooperation with the Institute of TU Bergakademie Freiberg, with the ability to use a specialised test facility. The link with the Institute also involves a lot of cutting edge mineral processing arena advancements, involving PhD students often supported by Haver & Boecker, many of whom have gone on to work for the group. 

In most mining markets Haver has a direct sales office and many of these also have engineering and assembly capabilities as well – these include Australia with a main location in Malaga near Perth; and in China in Tianjin. 

At the show, Haver had an F-Class triple deck screen at its booth, which is widely used in aggregate but also in mining, especially in North America in copper and in the Minnesota Iron Range for taconite screening, for example. But its screening capabilities in mining extend to the Niagara XL-Class – the largest in the world and widely used in the world’s highest throughput oil sands, potash, iron ore and copper operations. In 2024, it custom-engineered the largest vibrating grizzly screen in the world. Manufactured with Hardox® steel perforated plates and grizzly bars for a large Brazilian iron ore operation, the Niagara XL-Class vibrating grizzly screen boasts a capacity of 8,000 t/h and a cut size of 200 mm. As the largest exciter-driven machine in the industry, the XL-Class provides the operation with high-capacity screening while maximising uptime and production. Combined with the grizzly technology, the XL-Class offers the necessary ability to remove large stones, relieving pressure on the primary crusher. Haver & Boecker Niagara also supplied six Niagara XL-Class vibrating screens to one potash customer for a 2 Mt/y plant. The operation uses mineral screening equipment in a combination of screen sizes to effectively process potash salts with 20 and 10 mm cut sizes, improving efficiency and producing high-quality potash fertiliser. 

Haver & Boecker Niagara has an extensive refurb and rebuilds business both for its own screens and those of competitor brands

Haver screens are backed by a complete in-house manufactured screening media offering as well. Thompson: “We fit our screening media to the application and we have our own design software with which we can check everything and ensure the customer is using the right combination of screen media – whether woven wire – Ty-Wire, rubber – Ty-Dura, polyurethane – Ty-Deck, or a hybrid. In some cases, a blend of media types can also be the right option. It is an art balancing the throughput needed with the wear resistance required.” 

A recent development from Haver is the development of polyurethane media with two colours – dual-coloured – to show operators visually when the wear is at a critical level. An additional innovation widely used is a fast change out mechanism for Ty-Deck which uses pins.  

In addition to screening, Haver is a leader in pelletising. Today’s iron ore deposits with lower grades require intensive mineral processing where enrichment of iron components is achieved by separation of undesirable components. However, for this it is necessary to crush the ore to the de composition grain size and to supply sorting processes such as magnetic separation and flotation. To improve the process and product properties of the fine-grained iron ore concentrates, it is necessary to agglomerate these concentrates. Pelletising of iron ore concentrates in pelletising discs leads to significantly tighter distributed pellets with smooth surfaces. “Machines like our SCARABAEUS® 7500 pelletising discs are used for sustainable and efficient production of iron ore pellets. The unique design minimises circulation, increases productivity and profitability. These discs are remarkable for their significant tight particle size distribution with a target size of 10 to 14 mm, important for DRI processes.”   

The SCARABEUS® 7500 operates in a fully automatic mode and reproduces the pellet class set by technologists

The powder feed material is formed into pellets with use of water as the liquid binding agent. The optimum operating parameters can be set by changing the inclination, the rotational speed, mass flow rate, and now also the rim height thanks to the innovative automatic pelletising disc control system. “In addition, as it is adjustable and automatic, it is actually able to react to any changing nature of the ore coming in to still maintain the correct pellet output.” 

A lot of existing Haver customers of its large pelletising discs are looking to upgrade to SCARABAEUS, but there is also a large market for greenfield sites, especially those focused on serving the DRI market. “We are also in other pelletising markets – fertiliser producers are also using potash or NPK with ground limestone – and they are benefitting from the latest pelletising technology as well.”

As a screening and pelletising specialist, does that give Haver an advantage because of its focus, in contrast to other mineral processing giants that look to offer the entire range of solutions from crushing to milling to flotation, filtration and thickening? “Absolutely, there are companies that can supply almost everything – and some of that they have developed themselves and some of it is through bolt on acquisitions. But for usm screening and pelletising are in our DNA and one thing for example that distinguishes our screening expertise, is that we can really build anything that the customer might need. It’s not simply engineering of equipment, it’s understanding the entire mineral process and the role the screening circuit is playing within that.”

Thompson added: “With an aggregate screen you might be able to get away with a fairly standard two deck screen. But with the variation in mining markets, every single application is a unique offering. So when customers are looking for a fully engineered and customised solution in screening, they often come to us – and that could be the mining group itself or a major EPCM. They know there is no off the shelf approach with us and this is what allows us to meet the efficiency and uptime parameters they are looking for. Of course, in some cases, the large end to end players will be selected for strategic or other reasons, but often for large screening plants in mining we are the first choice.” 

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