A brief history of conveyor belts

The use of conveyor belts are quite recent in the history of mining, but today play a pivotal role in moving materials efficiently both far and near.

1892 Saw the earliest inventions of conveyor belts used to carry coal and ore.

Sandvik invented steel conveyor belts in 1901.

Richard Sutcliffe, an Irish mining engineer and inventor, invented the first underground conveyor belt that revolutionised the coal mining industry.

Today, conveyor belts are made for hundreds of applications in the mining industry, from the transporting of ore to processing, and are designed with specific characteristics such as oil resistance, impact resistance, and temperature resistance, depending on the application.

The longest conveyor belt system in the world is in the western Sahara, which carries ore over 98 kilometres!

The first and second longest single conveyor belts are in western Australia, where a 31km-long belt feeds a 20km-long belt at the Boddington bauxite mine to the Worsley Alumina Refinery.

At Chemvulc, we manufacture a range of products for conveyor belt repair, splicing both hot and cold systems, pulley lagging, and specialised adhesives, metal primers and more!

 Contact us for more product information.

Underground Mining in South Africa