Australia exported $132.3 billion in goods in the March quarter alone, with mining contributing to 62 per cent of revenue and 10 per cent of Australia’s GDP. But growing fleets of bulk-handling machines in export industries are operating beyond their lifespan and risking disruptions. With many original manufacturers no longer in existence or supporting the equipment, professional services firm Hatch is now warning that engineering knowledge, support and long-term maintenance capability is falling across critical infrastructure. The gap is beginning to leave many operators stranded when their ‘orphaned assets’ fail, risking financial losses across our export sectors.

The issue is increasingly significant across mining, ports and heavy industry, where large bulk-handling machines such as bucket wheel stacker-reclaimers and shiploaders cost well into the millions to design, build and install. Together, these machines quietly move hundreds of millions of tonnes of iron ore and coal through Australian ports each year. When they fail or can’t meet changing operational demands, the impact can quickly ripple through the economy if operators are unable to source parts, engineering support or redesign expertise.

Simon Nitschke, Hatch’s Brisbane-based Managing Director of Technologies, and Matthias Goeing, Hatch’s Director of Bulk Materials Handling Products based in Germany, say many large bulk-handling machines were designed to operate for decades, but ageing equipment across our export industry and increasing operational loads can sharply increase the risk of major structural or mechanical failures. With operators increasingly managing ‘orphaned assets’ on their own, such failures can lead to significant losses in production and critical capital.

Matthias says important industrial knowledge is disappearing in Australia and globally. “Over the past two decades, the number of original equipment manufacturers capable of supporting large bulk-handling systems has declined significantly. Today, only a small number of suppliers remain globally, leaving operators with ageing infrastructure but limited access to original design knowledge, spare parts or specialist engineering support.

“Many operators have reduced their in-house engineering teams over the past decade, which has caused a huge – and growing – loss of technical knowledge in the area.” Matthias points to workforce changes, including experienced engineering and technical specialists retiring across the sector and younger talent replacing them without the decades of legacy knowledge necessarily being passed on.

Simon says: “Across Australia alone, there are dozens of multi-million-dollar machines operating in mines and ports that were supplied by companies that no longer exist or no longer support older equipment.”

The issue is not only technical. When failures occur or operational demands change, replacing entire bulk-handling systems can involve costs in the tens to hundreds of millions, long procurement timeframes and potentially major operational disruption.

At the same time, many existing OEMs generate most of their margins through manufacturing and new equipment delivery, making complex redesign work on ageing assets commercially unattractive.

Hatch has identified this growing issue, with mining, ports and shipping operators putting greater emphasis on modernising their bulk-handling assets for current operational needs, redesign work, structural integrity assessments and reverse engineering – rather than replacing machines altogether. And they are achieving success by onboarding specialist engineering capabilities – specifically to redesign components, rebuild missing engineering documentation, analyse structural loads and fatigue, and reverse-engineer parts or systems where original drawings and technical data no longer exist.

Hatch says the future will be less about replacing critical assets and more about adapting and modernising them. Not only to extend their life: bulk-handling machines were designed decades ago and operators are now having to adapt these machines to different throughput, loading conditions and other requirements.

One recent example involved the rebuild of a bucket wheel stacker-reclaimer. After a major structural failure, Hatch helped the operator understand the root cause and avoid a multi-million-dollar machine replacement through a rebuild.

Hatch is seeing heavy industries turn to its own specialist engineering teams with decades of experience and knowledge in bulk-handling machine engineering to keep legacy equipment running. Hatch engineers are stepping in where support by OEMs no longer exists, where intensive engineering work is necessary and innovative solutions are required. It is engineering parts, designing components and even redesigning entire machines that were originally supplied by overseas manufacturers where the quality or performance is sub-par.

Beyond these solutions, Hatch is also improving the reliability and performance of infrastructure through condition assessments, risk-based maintenance strategies, automation and digital modernisation.

As more ageing systems lose their original manufacturers, Matthias and Simon expect these solutions to play an increasingly important role in keeping Australia’s export supply chain moving.