5 hours later… behold a new cooling tower

In 2007 IWC supplied three cooling towers to a South African based EPC, with the towers destined for a mine in Botswana. We recently received an urgent call from the mine asking for various spares since they had just experienced a breakdown on one of their cooling towers. Unfortunately the model of cooling towers was discontinued approximately 8 years ago and the spares required were only available as long lead items. A proposal was made to supply a new cooling tower from our current range which would match the original cooling towers performance. The various components were all available ex-stock and only needed to be assembled.

An order was placed immediately and 5 hours later the new EWK 144 cooling tower had been assembled, QC’d, and was ready for dispatch. A very happy customer had this to say: ‘Thanks for the great work and pass our thanks on to your production teams’. On the back of this order the mine has placed an order for an additional cooling tower.

With a production revival predicted, things are looking good for the Botswana Copperbelt. A number of copper mines stopped operating in 2015-2016 due to high operating costs at a time when copper prices were low, but this is changing. Botswana is now on track to see 2021 become a milestone for the country’s copper mining industry; this is thanks to significant copper reserves and a rally in copper prices.

Having supplied many copper mines with compressor, condenser, bearing, and process and slurry cooling towers, IWC is excited to be part of this revival. Read more on our cooling towers