High Pressure Girding rolls have been used in grinding cement clinker and associated materials since 1985 and had found a niche market in diamond ores and in pellet feed preparation. However their entry into hard rock mining was not secured until recently, with the successful commissioning and operation of the rolls at Cerro Verde in Peru.
Since then, the growth has been steady and persistent. HPGRs are now accepted as viable alternative to SAG mills. This has prompted an endless number of trade-off studies comparing the two systems. With energy prices going up, and the rolls requiring less energy for grinding than SAG mills, decisions are coming down on the side of HPGRs particularly in the case of hard ores. This is not only applicable to large scale projects, but also to smaller operation as will be shown in this paper.