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Representatives from Eurovia, including Didier Thèvenard, the company’s equipment director, and Vincent Follet, Eurovia’s French site operations manager, were present for the unveiling of the landmark 10,000th HP Series cone crusher during a special 10,000th sale-30th anniversary event at Metso’s key production and R&D site in Mâcon, east-central France, on 4th June 2019.
“Our HPs production quality and the final grade of product they produce corresponds exactly to market demand, especially compared to older machines,” explains Follet. “The HPs also enable us to produce the right formula of aggregates to go into our asphalt plants.” The landmark HP300 model will be used to process amphibolite rock at Eurovia company Carrières de Condat’s Pagnac quarry in the village of Verneuil Sur Vienne, 20 kilometres south of Limoges. After its commissioning this month in July 2019, it will work alongside a fixed HP3 plant and assist in producing sand and 0-2mm, 2-6mm, 6-10mm, 10-14mm and 14-20mm aggregate product.
“The HPs give us a good first pass yield and capacity,” said Douglas Galbraith, Bardon Hill co-operations director, who was joined at the Metso Mâcon event by fellow operations director Steve Harle. “You turn the HPs on in the morning and you rarely have an issue. They are easy to look after and are ideal for producing high value road aggregates.”
Harle added: “We always look for flexibility in our crusher configurations and the HP cone crushers gives us that.”
Ofitas de San Felices Group (OSF) has been using HP cone crushers for more than 24 years. Iñigo Ajuria, general manager of OSF, said: “We used [Nordberg] Symons and [Nordberg] Omnicone crushers and started using HP cone crushers as it was an evolution in the technology. Metso has the best crushers on the market, the best for technology, capacity, quality, reliability and versatility.”
OSF’s fleet of HP cone crushers – one HP100, three HP200s, one HP300, four HP 400s and four HP4s – work across the company’s three ophyte rock quarries, two in northern Spain and one in Granada, Andalusia, southern Spain. They work alongside a variety of Metso CVB and TS screens. OSF has a long history of high-quality ballast production, with huge volumes used in building Spain’s impressive high-speed rail network.
The HP Series range covers nine models. The latest generation HP3, HP4, HP5 and HP6 cone crushers have proved popular among aggregates quarrying and mining customers, while the HP100, HP200, HP300, HP400 and HP500 units are still selling strongly worldwide, with the HP300 the biggest selling crusher in the entire range. A truly global product, North America, Europe and Asia account for a combined 75% of HP Series sales, with South America accounting for 15% and Africa 10%.
“The HP is undoubtedly one of Metso's most widely used innovations. It's a technology that has been evolving throughout the years to meet customers' changing needs, making their operations more successful through proven performance and reliable output. That's most likely why HP has become an industry standard for a variety of aggregates and mining applications,” said Arto Halonen, vice president, aggregates crushers at Metso.
The origin of the HP Series cone crusher can be tracked back to Milwaukee, USA in the early to mid-1980s. The technological breakthroughs by the Nordberg research programme were said by Metso to redefine crushing performance and provided the basis for a new type of cone crusher introduced in 1989: the Nordberg High-Performance cone crusher series, today simply known as the HP.
Today, two thirds of HP Series models are engineered and manufactured in Metso's cutting-edge technology centre in Mâcon, France. The other third is produced in Metso’s technology centres in Brazil, China and India. A versatile crusher, the HP cone crusher is ideal for a wide range of fixed and mobile applications, varying from limestone to taconite and ballast production to manufactured sand.
Halonen continued: “Know-how from developing the HP and from thousands and thousands of customer applications around the world has played an integral part in Metso research and development initiatives in crushing.
“This [10,000 HP Series sales] is an important milestone for Metso and we want to thank our customers for their continued confidence in us during the first 30 years of the HP’s journey.”
Speaking at the Metso Mâcon hosted event, Renaud Lapointe, senior vice president, business & product management, Metso aggregates business division, said: “I joined this company 15 years ago and when you arrive at Metso Mâcon you hear about HP the first day you start your job. Everybody is contributing to this 10,000th crusher that we are delivering today, from design to manufacturing to sales support and technical support. It’s a common Metso success and a great day for the company.”
Also speaking at the Metso Mâcon event, Ilkka Somero, global product manager, Metso HP and GP cone crushers, said: “The development of the HP Series was born out of an evolution in Metso cone crushers: from traditional, mechanical Symons’ cones, to Omnicone and then the HP Series. It was strongly driven by the need for better performance, capacity and end-product quality. When HP Series cone crushers were introduced it became possible to produce much more with the same sized unit as before.”
Summarising the key features of HP Series cone crushers, Somero noted how they offered 35% higher production capacity than Omnicone models, greater interparticle crushing ability, higher reduction and better shape. He also highlighted how HP Series units had no separate short head and standard configurations, a high speed and long throw, a high hold downforce, an ability to seamlessly switch between secondary, tertiary, fines and sand processing applications, a very reactive tramp release mechanism and safe, quick and easy cavity clearing.
Presenting alongside Somero at the Metso Mâcon event, Halonen said that Metso’s main direction with the HP range is to improve its serviceability and performance, rather than planning any new models. He added: “We plan to make Metso Metrics [a cloud-based, remote monitoring and data visualisation service for Metso Lokotrack mobile crushing plants] available with the HP Series. This will give operators 24-hour access to their HP Series plant. We see an exciting long-term future for these units.” HP Series performance can already be enhanced if the cone crushers are supported by the Metso IC70C crusher automation system, allowing users to control maintenance, setting modifications, production follow-up and data extraction.
The recent Metso Mâcon hosted event also included a tour of the Mâcon manufacturing and assembly facility. Attendees learnt how each HP Series unit takes anything between two to five days to assemble and passes through more than 150 testing points. Each model undergoes four hours of rigorous testing covering areas including mechanical reliability, vibration and operating temperature. A key facility of the €200 million sales-a-year Metso France business, around 350 of the business’s staff work at or are linked to the Mâcon site.
Emphasising the truly global appeal of the Nordberg HP cone crusher range at the 10,000th sale-30th anniversary event was Sinohydro Bureau 8 Co. Ltd, Metso’s first HP customer in China. The firm has been using HP cone crushers for over 23 years, most notably in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Hubei province, central China.
Minghua Xiong, chief engineer on the Three Gorges Dam project, and Handong Zhang, the project’s overall manager, were among event guests.
Zhang said: “We only used Metso aggregates and sand processing plant in the Three Gorges Dam project. We used an HP500 as a secondary and tertiary crusher. HP Series cone crushers are first class equipment. We also used a [Metso Superior MK III] 5065 gyratory crusher and a Barmac B9100 [vertical shaft impactor], after we were advised by Metso to upgrade from a Barmac B9000. Metso continues to contribute a lot of plant and expertise to our company.”
