Tough steel plating from UK-based Ace Arc is being used to protect machinery digging for gold in Uzbekistan. The Leicestershire company is supplying its wearplate to a gold mine in the central Asian republic where it is fitted to wheel loaders and bulldozers. The plating is used to line the inside of various machines including buckets on Caterpillar 992 wheel loaders and also protects the blades of bulldozers at the mine, a joint venture between the Uzbekistan government and the American owners of the mine.

Ace Arc manufacturers the wearplate itself.

From its Coalville, Leicestershire, headquarters, it supplies the mining, quarrying and recycling industries worldwide with products that include conveyor cleaners and buckets for earth moving equipment.

Managing director Frank Fairbrother says: 'Wearplate effectively protects the parent metal of the equipment it's fitted on.

Because wear happens more on certain parts of the equipment, you only need replace that area of the wearplate rather than all of it, which ensures the protection of the parent material, minimising maintenance costs.' He estimates lining the bucket of a wheel loader would typically cost £4,000 to £5,000 compared to the bucket replacement, which could cost up to £25,000 depending on the size of the machine.

Depending on the application, chrome carbide wearplate typically lasts three to four times longer than the equivalent thickness of through hardened wearplate.

'In heavy abrasion processes, chrome carbide wearplate pays dividends,' says Mr Fairbrother.