McHale Komatsu at Hemerdon mine restart: fleet and haul design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on New Civil Engineer
30 Second Briefing
McHale Komatsu has secured a supply agreement with Tungsten West to provide construction and mining machinery for the restart of the Hemerdon tungsten and tin mine, located 12km from Plymouth in Devon. The Redditch-based supplier is expected to deliver heavy plant for overburden stripping, ore loading and haulage, supporting Hemerdon’s transition from care-and-maintenance back to full-scale open-pit operations. The deal signals renewed demand for large-capacity earthmoving and materials handling fleets on UK hard-rock sites, with implications for local civils, haul road design and pit slope management.
Technical Brief
- Restarting a large UK hard-rock pit will require rapid mobilisation of drill-and-blast, loading and haul fleets in sequence.
- Local topography and legacy pit geometry will constrain haul road gradients, influencing truck selection and fleet sizing.
- Agreement implies multi-year capex commitment on mobile plant, with lifecycle maintenance costs a major economic driver.
- Similar UK hard-rock restarts will likely benchmark Hemerdon’s fleet mix, availability targets and contractor–OEM support model.
Our Take
The earlier appointment of Duo Group and Gekko Systems for new crushing, screening and ore sorting at Hemerdon suggests Tungsten West is pairing the Komatsu fleet with a flowsheet geared to lower cut-off grades, which could be critical for margins at a large but previously challenged open pit in Devon.
McHale Komatsu’s role here follows the McHale Plant Sales–Marubeni-Komatsu UK distribution deal, indicating that Komatsu is consolidating its UK mining presence just as a major domestic tungsten-tin operation near Plymouth is moving back into production, likely improving service and parts support for the fleet over the life of the restart.
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.
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