A key Queensland miller has discussed major safety improvements in its cane rail operations, with long-term trends showing continual improvements in several key categories.
Mackay Sugar, which operates four mills in Queensland’s cane region, said in its annual report it had made progress in tackling the issue of train separation in its supply chain.
“Among the many critical risks that are managed in cane rail operations, train separation is arguably one of the most critical,” the company said. “Further progress was made [in FY17] on stretch targets for forward clearance alarms.”
The number of intrusions by track vehicles into forward clearances of other track vehicles in Mackay Sugar’s supply chain dropped to 2 per day in FY17, compared to 5 in FY16. 10 in FY15, and 75 back in FY12.
“Our operations centre team is commended for their concerted effort in managing train separation risks,” Mackay Sugar said.
It wasn’t all great news in terms of rail safety and efficiency for the milling company, however, after it failed to meet its derailments Key Performance Indicator. It was targeting 15,800 tonnes hauled per derailment, but came in just below that, at 15,325 tonnes per derailment.
The annual report said this figure was driven up by additional rail movements made necessary by a boiler failure at one of its mills, which saw some cane redirected to other sites.
Old bearing heat detectors were also to blame, the company said.
“The main issues were the additional transport activity due to cane transfers and unfortunately, the inability to detect hot bearings and avoid burnt out bearing failures due to insufficient funding being available to replace the obsolete hot axle detector systems at both Marian mill and Farleigh mill.”