Loadquip and Camco’s Mardie salt harvester: design notes for mining engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
BCI Minerals has commissioned a 1,500 t/h salt harvester for the Mardie salt and potash project in Western Australia, built through a collaboration led by Loadquip and Camco. The machine is engineered for continuous harvesting across large crystalliser ponds, integrating high-capacity materials handling with corrosion-resistant components tailored to marine salt conditions. For mining engineers, the project signals growing scope for locally engineered, heavy-duty mobile plant customised to hypersaline, abrasive environments rather than relying solely on imported, generic bulk materials equipment.
Technical Brief
- Project structure shows a viable model for regionally engineered mobile plant in niche bulk materials sectors.
Our Take
In our database, this Mardie salt operation work is one of only a small subset of salt- and potash-tagged mining pieces, signalling that BCI Minerals is pushing into a niche where fewer greenfield bulk-commodity projects are currently being profiled compared with battery metals.
The earlier item on Loadquip’s 1,500 t/h harvester factory tests for BCI Minerals suggests this build is part of a larger, standardised harvesting system rather than a one-off machine, which typically lowers lifecycle maintenance and spares risk for remote coastal operations.
With sodium-ion battery developers such as CATL and BYD drawing on salt-derived sodium, higher-capacity, mechanised salt harvesting at Mardie positions BCI Minerals to respond if chemical-grade salt demand tightens alongside grid-scale storage deployment.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
CMRR-io
Streamline coal mine roof stability assessments with our cloud-based CMRR software featuring automated calculations, multi-scenario analysis, and collaborative workflows.
HYDROGEO-io
Comprehensive hydrogeological testing platform for managing, analysing, and reporting on packer tests, lugeon values, and hydraulic conductivity assessments.
GEODB-io
Centralised geotechnical data management solution for storing, accessing, and analysing all your site investigation and material testing data.

