Iron Ore and Ice Weighing in Extreme Conditions
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The Arctic can be brutal on weighing equipment. When a Swedish mining company needed vehicle scales that would stand up to this far northern climate, it turned to METTLER TOLEDO. The solution was POWERCELL technology with its proven ability to weigh accurately and reliably in extreme environments.
Founded in 1890, the Swedish mining company Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) mines iron ore in Kiruna, 145 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. Throughout the course of a year, Kiruna is subjected to an extreme range of temperatures. It faces icy winters with temperatures as low as - 40° Celsius (- 40° Fahrenheit) and summers during which the midnight sun heats the air to 30° Celsius (+ 86° Fahrenheit).
In Kiruna, LKAB runs the world's largest and most advanced iron ore mining operation. It digs high-purity magnetic iron ore from mines in the two mountains of Kiirunavaara and Luossavaara. After extracting the iron ore, LKAB processes it into pellets the size of cherries. The small size of the pellets allows them to be melted quickly at lower temperatures.
The high-quality pellets are automatically loaded onto 68 rail wagons, each weighing 121 tons. They are then sent on a 173-kilometer journey through the tundra and Arctic landscape to the port of Narvik on Norway's Atlantic coast. From there, cargo ships transport them to customers throughout the world. Before this valuable cargo is shipped overseas, it is weighed in Kiruna by three METTLER TOLEDO dynamic rail scales. The first scale weighs the empty wagons, the second weighs the wagons as they are filled, and the third weighs the wagons again at an unloading station.
