d chief executive officer. Heavyweight conveyor belting carries coal from beneath the ground to above-ground scrubbing and coal preparation operations. The coal is then conveyed overland, as much as several miles, for loading and shipping.
“This is a very demanding application,” says Kelley. “Safety is the primary factor because of the high propensity for fires. You are dealing with methane and coal dust underground, so these conveyor belts have to be flame-retardant.” As many who have studied the history of coal mining in this country know, underground coal mine fires in the old days were actually helped by those old conveyor belts, which spread the fires. “Today, most of the flame-retardant and abrasion-resistant properties are achieved through advanced rubber chemistry and the rubber coating we use,” says Kelley.
The underground mines require a very elaborate system of conveyor belting. “It’s not just one belt, but a series of conveyor belts because you have to move the coal through a lot of different tunnels to get it out of the mine,” says Kelley. “So you are talking about tens of thousands of feet of conveyor belting being used in one mine.” Most of these heavyweight conveyor belts are used in the major coal-producing areas of the country, including the West Virginia-Kentucky pocket, the Pennsylvania-Ohio area, the Illinois-Indiana sector and western mines in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.
All of the applications using Scandura heavyweight conveyor belting operate in extremely rugged conditions and require belting with exceptional durability and reliability. “Our customers tell us that the quality of Scandura belting is superior in the industry,” says Kelley. “Our objective is to provide the lowest cost-in-use conveyor belt products to all of the industries we serve. Our objective is not to be the cheapest belt, but the highest-quality belt and the highest value-added belt.”
One of the challenges in designing conveyor belting for lightweight applications is that the belting has to be designed against producing excess noise, since these applications tend to be run at very high speeds and can make a lot of noise if it is not designed properly. The belting also has to be able to be cleaned thoroughly for food-handling applications. “You need a product that’s completely inert and one that resists moisture absorption,” explains Kelley. “Our lightweight belts are usually single-ply carcasses, typically coated with a PVC coating.”
Scandura’s primary product in this category is its ATI (advanced technology interwoven) conveyor belting. This product line uses interwoven carcasses with a variety of cover compounds and various cover combinations. The interwoven design resists edge wear and eliminates the possibility of ply separation failure.
Operating a broader manufacturing network than any of its competitors, Scandura leads in product quality and overall customer service. “We stand alone in our ability to provide a top-quality product with timely delivery and excellent service in the field,” says Kelley.
Networking the Product
The company has a network of more than 100 distributors. “Scandura invested a lot of time and energy in developing the best network in the industry, which we consider a competitive advantage,” Kelley says. Value-added distributors provide installation, repairs and other belt accessories such as the conveying equipment itself and idlers, pulleys, scrapers and cleaning equipment.
Scandura employs 460 people and operates five facilities totaling more than 800,000 square feet of space. In addition to the company headquarters in Charlotte, two other operations are located there, including the weaving facility and the facility that manufactures the ATI line of lightweight belting and the PVC-coated belting. Rubber belting is manufactured in the Port Clinton, Ohio, and the Bracebridge, Ontario, facilities. The Toledo, Ohio, facility produces lightweight rubber belting, primarily.
Scandura has always had a policy of continuously upgrading its manufacturing systems to keep the company’s facilities at state-of-th