ONTRAC Group’s XMOR bucket: payload, wear and fuel-efficiency notes for mine engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
ONTRAC Group’s XMOR bucket range, manufactured in Australia under licence from SSAB, cuts dead weight so every kilogram of removed steel becomes additional payload. The design uses high-strength, wear-resistant steels and a re‑engineered back and sides with an inverted keel supplied as a plug‑and‑play modular unit, shifting material away from low-stress zones. For mine operators, this allows larger effective payloads per pass without upsizing the excavator, with implications for haulage cycle times, fuel burn and wear on ground‑engaging tools.
Technical Brief
- Design work focuses on the back and side plates, where bulk steel is structurally least efficient.
- An inverted keel module is supplied as a plug‑and‑play unit, simplifying replacement and rebuilds.
Our Take
Weight-optimised buckets like ONTRAC Group’s XMOR design directly complement the productivity push seen in recent Australian iron ore coverage, such as Fortescue’s record Pilbara shipments, by turning existing truck and loader fleets into higher effective-capacity assets without new mobile plant purchases.
In our database of 1278 Mining stories, most Australia-focused ‘Product’ pieces are now framed around incremental efficiency gains rather than greenfield capacity, suggesting that lighter bucket systems will be evaluated not just on payload but on how quickly they pay back through reduced cycle times and fuel burn.
For Australian operators already investing in digital and autonomous fleets, as highlighted in the recent article on AI and connected data in local mines, lower-mass buckets provide cleaner input parameters for optimisation software, making it easier to model and lock in consistent payload targets across mixed equipment fleets.
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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