At first glance, the interior of our new pan calandria could be mistaken for modern art...

In fact, it’s an important component of the new pan vessel that’s built in-house for installation at our Macknade Mill this maintenance season.  

Comprising 882 individual tubes, the calandria weighs in at 24.9 tonnes. All of those tubes have to be welded to a top plate, before the entire calandria is flipped using two cranes (pictured right). Once the calandria has been flipped, our team continues with welding the tubes onto the bottom plate.

It’s a process that the team at our Burdekin Centralised Workshop have done many times before. This is the 11th pan vessel we’ve built in-house over the past 10 years.

The new calandria component and top cone, which was also fabricated by our Burdekin team, have now been transported 200km to their new home at Macknade Mill.

The pan’s bottom cone, body section and service pipes have been fabricated by the team at our Herbert Centralised Workshop, and have also been transported to Macknade Mill ahead of the pan’s official factory install.

The new pan will be commissioned ahead of the 2022 crushing season.