Protective coatings tougher than the elements: design notes for mine maintenance engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Protective wear-resistant coatings are being adopted across Australian mines and quarries to combat constant abrasion and corrosion on chutes, hoppers and crusher liners, where unprotected steel can lose millimetres of thickness in months. Products such as Loctite PC ceramic-filled epoxies and sprayable urethanes are being specified for high-slag, high-impact zones to extend service intervals on ore handling and slurry transfer assets. For maintenance engineers, the shift is towards engineered coating systems designed around specific particle size, impact velocity and chemical exposure rather than generic paint-style protection.
Technical Brief
- Spray-applied urethane systems are being used where flexible, elastomeric impact absorption is preferred over rigid ceramics.
- Coatings are being selected to tolerate thermal cycling on chutes and hoppers exposed to hot, freshly crushed ore.
- Maintenance teams are integrating coating application into shutdown windows to avoid additional unplanned stoppages.
- Wider implication is a shift towards life-of-asset lining strategies rather than repeated plate replacement.
Our Take
Loctite’s positioning in Australia, as seen in both this piece and the AIMEX-focused coverage of Henkel Australia’s LOCTITE range, suggests the brand is targeting lifecycle extension of wear components as a service-cost lever rather than just a consumables line item.
Within our 791 Mining stories, relatively few ‘Product’ and ‘Projects’ tag combinations focus on coatings, so this Loctite coverage sits in a niche area where maintenance engineering choices can materially affect shutdown intervals and project availability in Australian operations.
For Australian sites, adopting protective coatings of the type Henkel showcases for LOCTITE at AIMEX typically becomes most attractive on assets like chutes and pumps that are hard to access, implying that early design-stage allowance for coating systems can reduce later retrofit complexity on new projects.
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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