Exactly three years ago, we reported to our “world of rope“ readers about a world record set in the Australian Northparkes mine. There, our TURBOPLAST M just achieved an unbelievable 652,239 cycles in 46 months, and brought over 22 million tons of rock up from the depths. We are proud to inform you in this issue that we have succeeded in breaking our own record. In the Slovakian mining region of Horna Nitra, the company HBP (Hornonitrianske Bane Prievidza a.s.), operates a total of three mines near the city of Prievidza. With an annual output of 1.9 million tons and over 100 years’ experience, HBP is the largest brown coal producer in Slovakia.

In June, we succeeded in achieving a cycle count of 656,046 and a total output of 12,382,083 moved rocks on the floor-based friction winch near Novaky, a town near Prievidza, thus beating the Australia world record for floor-based friction winches. This is a system with one hoist rope: in Northparkes a total of four hoist ropes work simultaneously. In Novaky there are two shafts, the North Shaft with a drum winch and a Ø40mm TURBOPLAST, and the South Shaft with the Ø66mm TURBOPLAST on a friction winch. The record-breaking rope is the Ø66mm TURBOPLAST with an operating length of 570m. The friction winch here reaches speeds of 12m/s and a load capacity of 7t. The rope was installed on July 06, 2008, meaning that it has a lifetime of over ten years. However, the best news is: The rope is still on the system, unlike the Australian record-breaking rope, and will therefore push the record even higher. The mine in Novaky has kept detailed records on the lifetimes of all ropes installed since 1976. Our current rope is the thirteenth so far, and it has exceeded the lifetimes of all its predecessors by a factor of at least 2. Its safety is guaranteed through a magneto- inductive test, which takes place every six months. The last test in April of this year showed only six wire breakages over the entire rope length, so we expect the rope to remain on the system for some time yet – an even higher bar for future records!