Black Lion GroupMachinery
A DEVELON excavator loading a dump truck at dusk with work lights blazing

BLG Machinery · Services

Equipment that earns its keep.

We don’t hire machines out and wish you luck. We operate them, maintain them, dispatch them, and train the crews who run them. That is the whole service, and it is why the uptime is ours to answer for, not yours.

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A fleet is only as good as its worst week.

Anyone can quote a good day. The number that matters is what the fleet delivers in the week the weather turns, a pump fails and two operators are off. That number comes from maintenance discipline, spares on the shelf, and crews who know their machine. Not from the badge on the bonnet.

The fleet earns its living on the Group's own chrome and copper sites, which is the closest thing to a reference we can offer: the standard we hold on our own ground is the standard that turns up on yours.

Oblique aerial of the DEVELON fleet working across a mine site at last light
One fleet, one standard

What we actually do.

Contract Mining & Earthmoving

End-to-end operation on your site or ours: drill and blast support, load and haul, earthworks and bulk material movement, run to a schedule with our machines and our crews.

Machine Supply & Sourcing

Need a machine we don’t run? We source it. Our buying reach covers the mining and earthmoving market across South Africa, well beyond the DEVELON and Doosan range, so the spec drives the machine, and not the contents of our yard.

Maintenance & Uptime

Servicing, repairs and rebuilds to a schedule, not to a hope. We maintain our own fleet this way, and we will maintain yours the same way, whoever built the machine.

GPS Dispatch & Match-Factor

Fleet management with GPS dispatch and load match-factor optimisation, so neither the shovel nor the truck spends its shift waiting for the other.

Advisory & Fleet Planning

Before a machine arrives, the harder questions: what fleet the job actually needs, how the cycle should be balanced, and what a tonne will really cost to move. We have made these calls on our own mines, so the advice is paid for in experience, not theory.

Operator Training

Crew development and operator training to make sure every machine performs as well as the day it was delivered.

Mining Services

Drill and blast, geology, survey and mine planning, metallurgy. Where a job runs past the iron and into the orebody, our sister division brings those people to the table.

The open engine bay of a DEVELON excavator at last light, side doors swung wide, a torque wrench, sockets and a new oil filter laid out on a tray across the tracks
Maintained on siteUptime is a discipline

Downtime is a decision someone made earlier.

A fleet-dispatch screen showing machine positions on haul routes and cycle-time charts, a two-way radio and hard hat alongside
GPS dispatch & match-factor

Most unplanned downtime is not bad luck. It is a service interval stretched, a part not on the shelf, or an operator never taught what the machine was telling them. All three are choices, and all three are ours to make properly.

So we run maintenance to schedule, hold spares against the OEM relationships we have built, and put every operator through training that continues after induction. GPS dispatch and match-factor optimisation then make sure the machines that are available are actually earning.

From acquisition to uptime.

Acquire

Machines bought outright against a real deployment, specified with the OEM, not picked off a lot.

Deploy

Matched to the face, the haul and the plant, then dispatched on GPS with match-factor optimisation.

Maintain

Serviced to schedule by our own people, with parts backed by the DEVELON and Doosan relationships.

Sustain

Operators trained and re-trained, utilisation tracked, and the fleet renewed before it becomes a liability.

The wider Group

When the question runs past the machines.

Machinery is one of four Black Lion divisions, and it does not work alone. Our sister division, BLG Mining, runs two producing mines of its own: copper in the Kunene region of Namibia, and anthracite at Vryheid in KwaZulu-Natal. So the disciplines you usually need alongside the iron already sit inside the Group.

Drill & Blast

Designed and executed against the fragmentation your plant actually wants, not a generic pattern.

Geology & Resource

Resource definition reported to JORC and SAMREC standards, so the numbers travel to a bank or a board.

Survey & Mine Planning

Pit design, scheduling and reconciliation, tying what the fleet moves back to what the plan promised.

Metallurgy & Processing

Plant and process work, from crushing and screening through to recovery.

Safety & Environment

Managed to ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 on our own operations, and available to yours.

See the full mining services at BLG Mining ↗

For third parties

Available where capacity allows.

Our first obligation is to the Group's own operations. Beyond that, machinery and operating crews are available to third-party operators on a contract basis: the same equipment, the same crews and the same standard we hold ourselves to. If you have a job that needs iron and people who know how to use it, talk to us.

Talk to us about contract operating →

Before you get in touch.

What if you don’t have the machine we need?

Then we source it. Our buying and hire-in reach covers the mining and earthmoving market across South Africa, not just the DEVELON and Doosan range. Tell us the spec and the window and we will find the machine, price it honestly, and put it on site with a crew and a maintenance plan behind it.

Do you hire out machines without operators?

As a rule, no. Our model is owned equipment run by our own trained crews, because that is where the uptime and accountability come from. For third parties we operate the machines for you instead of dropping the keys and leaving.

Can we contract your crews and machines for our own site?

Where capacity beyond the Group's own operations allows, yes. It works on a contract-operating basis, at the same standard we hold ourselves to. Tell us about the job and the window and we will let you know honestly what we can commit.

How do you keep utilisation high?

Maintenance to schedule, spares held against our OEM relationships, GPS dispatch with match-factor optimisation, and operators trained well past induction. Downtime is mostly a series of earlier choices, and we make them properly.

Which brands do you run and support?

Our own fleet is anchored by 2025-model DEVELON, with a Doosan Equipment partnership for parts and acquisitions and Metso on crushing. Those are direct manufacturer relationships, not a dealer at arm's length. We are not limited to them, though. We source and supply machines from right across the mining and earthmoving market in South Africa.

Speak with the Machinery team.

Tell us the job, the tonnes and the window, and we’ll tell you honestly what we can commit to. We reply within one business day.