NAURU PLANT

Grey River Argus, 9 January 1941, Page 10

NAURU PLANT

Loading of Ships ELECTRICAL MACHINERY. The plant for mining and loading rock phosphate at Nauru Island is one of the most modern and efficient ever devised for handling mineral in bulk'. It is regarded as a triumph or British engineering skill, and embodies experience which had accumulated since the phosphate deposits of Ocean and Nauru had first been worked by primitive methods in IJOI and 1906 'respectively. _ . The deposits, which lie amid a ioiest of coral pinnacles, are worked m some places by mechanical shovel loaders delivering into trucks drawn by electric locomotives. Elsewhere Chinese labourers shovel the mineral into skips holding 25 cwt. each and attached to electrically-operated cableways. The railway carries the phosphate to elevated “wet” storage bins some distance inland. From these it is passed on belt conveyors to crushing and mechanical drying plants, and thence to the large foreshore storage bins. ' After taking possession from the Pacific Phosphate Company in I^, the British Phosphate Commission placed an order with Henry Simon, Limited, of Manchester, for the construction of a huge cantilever from which phosphate can be discharged direct into the holds of vessels moored beneath it.

The device was completed in September 1930, after just , over three years’ work. It consists of two immense steel truss arms, each mounted upon a' high concrete tower standing on the edge of the reef. The arms are 172 ft. long, with an extension giving a total length of 200 ft. lhe steel trusses extend rearward, supporting huge counterweights, and the whole structure can be traversed horizontally. Ships are hauled in and moored under the end of the cantilevers by an elaborate system of hawsers and buoys, which can be slipped instantly if required. The ends of the two arms are swung over separate holds, steel pines 2ft. in diameter are lowered from them, and phosphate is poured out at the rate of 1,000 tons an hour. The mineral is conveyed from me storage bins on the foreshore in three stages by endless rubber belts 36in. wide. A vessel can be loaded with 10,000 tons of phosphate in a day without moving her at the moorings. The cantilever and all other machinery on the island is operated electrically from a Diesel power plant using crude oil pumped from steamers into tanks on the foreshore. Lighters continue in use for landing stores and supplies at a steel jetty, and are accommodated in a boat harbour some distance away. The equipment includes a modern machine shop and a foundry,