COVA Haywards has delivered some of Australia’s most unique bulk-handling equipment projects. ABHR looks at the joint venture’s journey to date.
COVA Haywards’ bespoke projects provide the Australian bulk-handling sector with customised solutions suited to their applications.
It began with COVA Group’s idea to enter the market as an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor in their own right.
COVA Group’s shift towards EPC projects created a joint venture between two respected Australian-based organisations.
COVA Group formalised its long association with Haywards by creating the joint venture known as COVA Haywards in 2019.
The joint venture came after many years of collaborating on projects in the bulk-handling industry. For several decades, Haywards fabricated and constructed many projects designed by the COVA Group.
Chris Tummon, project development manager at COVA Group, told ABHR that the partnership had a natural synergy.
“COVA was doing design and offering procurement and commissioning support, and Haywards was doing fabrication and structural, mechanical, and piping works [for many projects],” he said.
“From a COVA perspective, we were leaving a lot of opportunity on the table given that we already had, between us, the experience to deliver the projects.
“As a business, we saw that we had a strength in that small-to-medium-sized machine market, and we thought we could take advantage of that with the skillsets between us.”
COVA Haywards delivers services from the initial project concept through to the execution and project delivery across the bulk-handling sector.
Together, they have delivered projects across Australia as a joint venture, which is helped by their national presence, with offices in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart. Their personalised approach to providing tailored solutions for customers has seen them deliver everything from radial stackers for the Olive Downs mining operation to clinker import systems in Fremantle and Geelong, as well as a replacement shiploader and gallery conveyor in Burnie, Tasmania.
The close working relationship between COVA Group and Haywards, which underpins the venture, is fundamental to delivering this vast array of projects.
“It has been formed by years of working together on projects, learning how each other works and integrating the way we work,” Tummon said.
“There are some efficiencies we’ve developed over the years just by working together, and the teams have worked together over a long period of time from a construction point of view.”
Steve Edmunds, managing director at Haywards, added: “It is an ideal fit because the things that we lack are well and truly covered by COVA. Right from that early engagement through to that final commissioning and ongoing support for operations can be covered by the two companies.
“[It removes] the need for other parties, which makes it more difficult, and this provides a one-stop, established solution for clients.”
Their joint venture delivers projects through a design-and-construct (D&C) approach, which frequently incorporates an Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) phase.
ECI allows the client to collaborate with COVA’s design team early in the project, contributing expertise that can enhance constructability, cost efficiency, and overall project outcomes.
In contrast, the traditional delivery method in the bulk-handling industry—commonly referred to as ‘design, bid, and build’—excludes this early collaboration phase, separating the design and construction stages, which can sometimes lead to inefficiencies or missed opportunities for optimisation.
“Our key competitive advantages are our local presence, our delivery, our ability to provide ongoing support, and our ability to work with clients to deliver the solutions they need, rather than providing them a previous or standard design,” Tummon said.
“One of our other strengths is that, compared to original equipment manufacturers, we will deliver a complete solution. I don’t think a lot of the OEMs are able to provide that service.
“We offer bespoke solutions for every project. They might be similar to a previous project, but they are always tailored to suit what a client needs.”
Edmunds added: “Every project is different; we’re not delivering the same project. Out of that, experience, versatility, and adaptability are gained to help us add a little bit more to each project.”
Major organisations across the bulk-handling sector, including tier-one mining companies and Australian port authorities, trust COVA Hayward’s ability to deliver. This trust underlines COVA Hayward’s commitment to meeting the highest levels of quality and safety that these industry leaders demand. With many bulk-handling sectors involving corrosive materials and environments, they see COVA Hayward’s expertise in a wide range of bulk-handling materials as a key strength.
This has led COVA Haywards to deliver some of the most unique and bespoke projects in the Australian bulk-handling industry.
Fremantle Ports engaged the joint venture in 2022 for a new clinker import facility. The inflated 40-metre-high clinker dome was a first for the Western Australian sector.
Located at the Kwinana Bulk Terminal, the dome provides a unique storage facility with a covered conveyor network connected to the Cockburn Cement plant. It also supplies BGC, another major clinker importer in Western Australia. The clinker dome, the second of its type in Australia, can hold around 40,000 tonnes within a smaller footprint than a conventional clinker storage shed.
“They wanted to build a linear shed, stockpile system with an overhead tripper and a reclaim system with front-end loaders. We looked at that, the amount of space it would take up on-site, and the capital cost of the shed versus alternatives. Through research, we came up with the dome,” Tummon said.
“We found the dome to be slightly more cost-effective from a [capital expenditure] perspective than the shed and a lot more cost-effective than the shed in terms of operation and maintenance costs, so it had a lot of positives to it.”
Sedgman and CPB chose COVA Haywards in 2022 for their Olive Downs project. COVA Haywards won a competitive tender process to deliver two 66-metre-long radial stackers. Both were equipped with dual walkways and ran on rubber tyres.
COVA Haywards’ initial work has drawn positive reviews from customers.
One client has already been so impressed with two stackers from the COVA Haywards that they are open to adding more later in their project.
“Pleasingly, they’ve gone very well, and now they’re looking at building two more of these stackers with a study underway,” Tummon said.
“[The repeat work] is a testament to the relationships we’ve developed.”
These projects can be carried out successfully due to the experienced team supporting COVA Hayward’s business. COVA Haywards has experienced professionals who help clients at every stage of the bespoke project through their industry knowledge and technical expertise.
“All of the people who were in key roles back in the late 90s and early 2000s are still involved in the business in some form; retaining those people is one of our key strengths,” Tummon said.
“Using those people to train new people coming into the business is certainly the case from a technical side, and the construction team and the people that are involved know the projects and have the experience.”
Five years after joining forces under a joint-venture arrangement, COVA Haywards provides an established solution for Australian bulk handling operations.
