Metso HRC 8 HPGR: waste-to-sand performance and design notes for mine engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Metso’s HRC 8 high pressure grinding roll, distributed in southern Africa by Pilot Crushtec, is being deployed to convert crusher fines and other unsaleable by-products into high-quality manufactured sand with tightly controlled particle shape. The compact HPGR unit is engineered for tertiary and quaternary crushing, using inter-particle compression to improve cubicality and reduce overgrinding compared with cone crushers. For mines and quarries, this allows higher overall plant yield from existing deposits and can cut waste stockpiles and associated environmental liabilities.
Technical Brief
- For similar operations, modular HPGR units offer a route to debottleneck sand production without expanding pits.
Our Take
Metso’s presence in southern Africa through Pilot Crushtec complements its recent large-scale process plant wins with Barrick at Lumwana and Ma’aden’s Ar Rjum project, signalling that the OEM is pushing both high-end concentrator technology and more modular, quarry/aggregate-focused solutions into different tiers of the market.
Across our mining database, Metso is one of the few suppliers appearing simultaneously in flotation (Concorde Cell), grinding (Select mills for Viscaria) and smelting (Outotec Flash Smelting in Asia), so the HRC 8 sand application positions the company to influence material efficiency from pit to final concentrate and even smelter feed quality.
With more than 100 Life Cycle Services contracts recently reported for Metso, an HRC 8 deployment via Pilot Crushtec in southern Africa is likely to be bundled with performance-based service, which can be important for quarries and mines trying to de-risk adoption of waste-to-sand technology under tightening sustainability expectations.
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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