Ted Young (1922-2018) – A Leader in Crushing Plant Design

By on November 27, 2018

Ted Young

Ted Young

ADRIAN TOWN, Former Development Manager for the CMPA

Ted Young was a leader in process plant design for the Quarry and mining industries for over 60 years. He was a founding and lifelong member of the CMPA. Ted passed away on 29th June this year aged 95.

Ted was well respected within the Quarrying industry; his expertise sought by CMPA members on many occasions when upgrading their operations.

Ted started work at the age of 16 in 1938 as an apprentice fitter and turner with Ruston Hornsby Aust. in Bourke Street Melbourne, Ruston Hornby who sold Diesel engines, manufactured in England as well as Ruston Bucyrus excavators and draglines.

After completing his apprenticeship, he moved to the drawing office becoming involved in sales and technical matters and was given the opportunity to further his studies at Melbourne and Caulfield Technical Schools which proved of considerable value in later years. It became clear to Ted that the days for large diesel power stations were numbered so he started looking for other opportunities.

Ted married Pat in 1948 and joined Jaques Bros in 1949, as assistant to the sales director at their Richmond head office. Two of the best decisions he ever made. Jaques had been manufacturing stone crushers and associated heavy engineering equipment in Richmond Vic. since 1885 and became a public listed company in 1948. When Ted started at Jaques Bros he had no previous experience with stone crushing machinery, being a new recruit proved challenging and required a quick learning curve.

In 1951 Ted was appointed Sales Manager at the young age of 29, becoming Sales Director seven years later.

When Ted entered the industry, a transition was taking place from small one and two stage crushing plants with wooden structures, bucket elevators and Trommel screens to more complex processing plants. Teds role was to introduce the new concept in plant design, incorporating steel structures, conveyors, surge piles, bins and the latest crusher and screening technology.

This seemingly radical move found widespread acceptance from shire and city councils in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland, which were looking for plants having 20-40 tonnes per hour capacity. Independent quarries and larger capacity plants soon followed. Ted worked closely with the machine design team at Jaques, developing and upgrading the range of equipment to meet the expectations of the industry.

The late 1950’s saw the introduction of the larger three stage high capacity crushing plants. Flow sheets needed to be developed requiring a complex mathematical spread sheet, based on material to be crushed, raw feed grading, plant capacity, crusher grading’s, screening efficiency, size and number of products to be produced.

Stawell Quarry 1957

Stawell Quarry 1957

Ted’s strength in math’s enabled him to teach himself and his team how to develop these complex flow sheet calculations, providing the bases for the selection and sizing of equipment.

In those days it could take anything up to a day to develop the flow sheet, computer programs are now available that achieve the same result in a third of the time. One of the original higher capacity plant concepts Ted designed was, a 50tph to < 20mm transportable plant in closed circuit for the Country Roads Board at Stawell in 1956-57.

In 1958 there was an urgent call for ballast for the construction of a standard gauge rail line between Melbourne and Sydney. Ted responded to the demand, designing and installing two complete ballast plants for customers at Barnawatha and Seymour in Victoria. This was quickly followed up with, a 250tph aggregate plant, installed at Tullamarine opposite the airport for Bayview Quarries, the largest plant in Victoria, at the time.

Bayview Quarries in 1960

Bayview Quarries in 1960

Ted was involved with many other large quarry and mining process plants, supplied and installed around Australia, such as the BHP 400tph manganese iron ore plant on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory, 350tph aggregate plant for Bayview Quarries (now Boral) at Montrose in Victoria, and a 350tph plant for Pioneer at Bass Point NSW in 1970 to name a few.

In 1960 Jaques sent Ted to America for three months to study a wide range of crushing plant installations from the west coast to the east coast, as well as Canada. Whilst in the US, he negotiated a manufacturing arrangement with Universal Engineering to build and market their range of Hammermills, Nico apron feeders and wobbler feeders. It became clear to Ted in the early 60s there was a major export market for crushing equipment.

One of the first forays into the export market presented itself with an inquiry from the Australian High Commission in Karachi, Pakistan of a tender from the local government for a complete crushing and screening plant, plus supervision of erection. Ted visited Karachi and spent 10 days there having discussions with the local government regarding the design requirements and performance guarantees.

Ted submitted the bid, and before he arrived back in Australia, a letter of acceptance had been received. The contract had its difficulties such as when the Jaques erection engineer arrived on site the foundations that the customer was providing had not been started and an issue of the raw feed material changing from the original limestone to river gravel. Despite the challenges, the plant was erected and commissioned on time, meeting capacity and grading set out in the contract.

Hong Kong, 450 t.p.h aggregate plant for Anderson, Asia.

Hong Kong, 450 t.p.h aggregate plant for Anderson, Asia.

With the success of this export project, Ted was looking at other possibilities in the Asia Pacific area, and he decided to visit Hong Kong to check out the potential for quarry plant. This was when Hong Kong was going through a major construction boom in high-rise apartments and office buildings requiring large quantities of aggregates and concrete. Ted visited all the major operators introducing Jaques capabilities, and soon won a contract for a 150tph 3 stage plant. This led to similar orders for further plants, the larger being a 400tph installation. Hong Kong proved to be a significant market both for complete plants and single pieces of equipment.

Following this success, Ted was involved with Jack Keegan (Jaques Managing Director) and Keith Johnston (Spare Parts Manager) setting up Jaques in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia with agents in Thailand, the South Pacific, Taiwan and New Zealand.

To keep up with the demand in the Asian market a factory was built in Malaysia in the mid-1970s, producing plants, wire mesh, crushers and screens. Plants were also exported to Indonesia, Solomon Islands, West Soma, Nauru, and New Caledonia.

This was a period of expansion in the quarrying, cement and mining industries with increased capacity requiring new technology in crusher design and larger crushers to meet the demand. Jaques under Ted’s guidance set out to increase the range of crushers in both size and capacity. This design responsibility fell on the shoulders of Keith Clugston (Jaques chief design engineer) and his team. A range of single toggle crushers up to 60×50 were developed, also larger screens and feeders.

Keith had been thinking for some time why not replace the bushes in cone crushers with roller bearings, working closely with SKF he designed a revolutionary roller bearing designed mechanism cone crusher with Hydraulic adjustment that became the Jaques Gyracone range of crushers to meet the new demands of the industry.

Secondary, tertiary plant for K.Wah, Hong Kong

Secondary, tertiary plant for K.Wah, Hong Kong

In 1982 Ted reached the then retirement age of 60. However, he stayed on another year to train younger colleagues.

In 1983 after 34 years in sales and technical activities and the last twenty-five years as a director of Jaques, Ted retired. Ted found retirement a big change after a long and active working career. The slower pace was not to his liking, and he happily provided advice to many seeking out his experience.

It became evident to Ted that there were people and companies involved in the crushing and allied industries both in Australia and overseas looking for independent advice from someone experienced in the industry but not tied to a supplier.

Ted continued working for a further 15 years as a consultant providing his expertise in quarry and mining process, to companies within CMPA, Australia, Asia and the South Pacific, before finally retiring in 1998.

For the next 20 years Ted maintained his passion for quarrying and mining, avidly reading each new issue of Sand and Stone while maintaining his friendships from his years in the quarrying industry.

Some of the above are extracts from the October 2006 Quarry Magazine and also notes provided by Ted Young’s Family.

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