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January2014

Vol 10 No 1www.crown.co.za

MODERN MININGIN THIS ISSUE…SOUTHERN AFRICA’S TOP MINING PROJECTS Trident copper/nickel project, Zambia Ghaghoo Diamond Mine, Botswana Venetia Underground, South Africa Otjikoto Gold Mine, Namibia Kipoi copper project, DRC

A member of the Omnia Groupyears andcounting

w January 2014MODERN MINING3

CoverBME engineers prepare a blast at a mine site using the company’s AXXIS™ digital initiation system. See page 18 for an interview with BME’s Managing Director, Francois Hay.

PublisherJenny Warwick

EditorArthur Tassell

Advertising ManagerBennie Venter

Design & LayoutDarryl James

CirculationKaren Pearson

Subscriptions:Wendy CharlesR410 (incl. Vat) per annumPostage extra outside RSA

Printed by:Shumani Printers

The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the editor or the publisher.

Published monthly by:Crown Publications ccP O Box 140, Bedfordview, 2008Tel: (011) 622-4770Fax: (011) 615-6108e-mail: [email protected]

Average circulation(July–September 2013)

4 379

MODERNM I N I N G

CONTENTSMINING NEWS6 Kombat Copper aims to re-open Namibian mine

7 Murray & Roberts establishes Copperbelt base

9 Rockwell delivers record quarterly carat production

11 Bamboo Rock to acquire control of Zambian project

12 Record-breaking blast at Kolomela

13 Larger diamonds factored into resource estimate

15 Wits honours Professor Huw Phillips

15 Paragon to purchase processing plant from Mothae

17 Banro’s Namoya mine pours its first gold

ARTICLESCOVER18 BME holds its own in a difficult market

COMPANIES23 WorleyParsons merges its SA business units

EVENTS26 African Mining Indaba turns 20

FEATURE – Southern Africa’s top five mining projects28 Introduction

30 Trident – First Quantum’s Zambian mega-project

38 Gem Diamonds winning in the Kalahari Sand

46 New life underground at De Beers’ Venetia Mine

54 Otjikoto on course to commission in late 2014

62 Kipoi – a nearly perfect copper mining project

PRODUCT NEWS70 Containerised water plant for Kansanshi

70 Rapid laser mapping system tested at Mponeng

71 Complex design on Black Rock chute systems

72 Locally manufactured apron feeder introduced

73 Pilot Crushtec unveils double roll crusher

74 Joest wins order to supply mineral sands mine

75 Tracked material feeder launched

76 MSA introduces Airline breathing apparatus

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January 2014MODERN MINING5

New look for ‘Modern Mining’Observant readers will notice that we have introduced a new page design in this issue. The previous layout served us well but we are now entering our tenth year of publication and felt it was time for the magazine to get a new look.

Our studio has come up with a more modern, more colourful and slightly less ‘busy’ layout which we like and which we hope readers will too.

We also considered changing our cover design but, after much reflection, decided that it was an integral part of our identity – being instantly recognisable – and should be retained in its familiar form.

Bingham Canyon landslide induced 16 earthquakes

COMMENT

I see that the massive landslide that oc-curred at the Rio Tinto-owned Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah in the US in April last year is once again in the news. The landslide – believed to be the

biggest non-volcanic event of its type to have occurred in North America in modern times (and almost certainly the biggest ever in the mining field) – had a devastating effect on the mine, located 33 km south-west of Salt Lake City, which is not expected to get back to nor-mal operations until 2016.

The reason for the fresh focus on this awe-inspiring event is a cover story in the latest issue of GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America, in which a team of scientists from the College of Mines and Earth Sciences at the University of Utah analyse the landslide in detail. As they point out, they had plenty of data to work from as the mine is located within “a dense regional net-work of seismometers and infrasound sensors”, making the landslide one of the best recorded in history.

The slide occurred in the mine’s 970 m deep pit, the largest man-made excavation in the world (it can apparently be seen with the naked eye from space), and moved a total mass of 165 million tons, equivalent to a source vol-ume of approximately 55 million m3 – enough to cover New York’s Central Park with around 20 m of debris.

Fortunately, no lives were lost in the slide as monitoring equipment gave ample warn-ing – over a period of months – of increasing instability in the pit. According to the scien-tists, movements became so strong on 10 April 2013 that the mine operators evacuated the area and even had time to issue a press release stat-ing that failure was imminent. The first of two rock avalanches occurred roughly seven hours later, with the second following 90 minutes after that. The avalanches took out a substantial amount of equipment, including 14 haul trucks and three shovels, and forced the closure of the mine’s main access ramp. The ramp was only re-opened in November last year, after remedial work by Rio Tinto Kennecot which involved the moving of 6 million tons of material.

The avalanches, of course, released a huge amount of energy, with the surface-wave mag-nitudes for the first and second events being 5,1 and 4,9 respectively. Apparently, the material displaced moved at a speed of up to 100 mph (161 km/h) and over a distance of nearly 2 miles (3,2 km).

Perhaps the most interesting of the findings of the University of Utah team is that the land-slide precipitated a number of earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 2,5 on the Richter Scale. They write in their paper that “in the six days following the landslide, 16 additional seis-mic events were detected and located in the mine area. Seismograms for these events have impulsive arrivals characteristic of tectonic earthquakes. Hence, it appears that in this case the common geological sequence of events was inverted. Instead of a large earthquake trigger-ing landslides, it was a landslide that triggered several small earthquakes.”

In the aftermath of the event, mine officials said production at Bingham Canyon in 2013 could be 50 % lower than in 2012 – a year in which the mine produced 163 000 tons of refined copper, 279 000 ounces of gold and 94 tons of molybdenum. Historically, the mine – established in 1906 – has been one of the world’s greatest copper producers, yield-ing more than 17 million tons of the metal up to 2004. In recent years it has reportedly pro-duced nearly 25 % of the copper consumed in the US.

I don’t know how many readers have seen photos of the landslide but, for those who haven’t, there is much visual material to be found on the internet, including a magnificent collection of high resolution photos which can be accessed from the Rio Tinto Kennecot website (www.kennecot.com). The paper by the University of Utah team is freely available for download from the GSA website (www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/) but, be warned, it is fairly technical. Nevertheless I think the geologists and geotechnical experts among our readers will find it of huge interest, par-ticularly those involved with work relating to pit stability.Arthur Tassell

6MODERN MININGJanuary 2014

MINING News

Jubilee, the AIM- and AltX-quoted ‘Mine-to-Metals’ specialist, has announced that the Middelburg Smelter operation has achieved a new record production rate of more than 35 tons of ferronickel metal within a single 24-hour shift – exceeding the previous record of 26 tons of metal.

This achievement comes following the company’s recent announcement (dated 23 December 2013) that it had secured funding for the final phase of the smelter renewable programme, which includes the expansion of the Middelburg Smelter operation to three operating ARC furnaces.

Two of these furnaces will be dedicated to the production of ferronickel metal and the third furnace to the production of fer-rosilicon metal, thereby increasing the total targeted smelter design capacity to 13 900 tons of metal per annum. All three furnaces have been fully contracted.

With proceeds in place to fund the com-missioning of the remaining third ARC furnace at Middelburg, Jubilee believes that the Middelburg Smelter is in a strong posi-tion to enhance its earnings profile.

With a view to expanding its access to platinum containing material, Jubilee has also announced that the company has entered into a £10 million Equity Finance Facility (EFF) with Darwin Strategic Limited. The EFF can be utilised by the company, at its sole discretion, over a commitment period of 60 months.

The EFF has been secured by Jubilee in support of its Mine-to-Metals strategy and more specifically towards potential acqui-sitions targeted by the company in the platinum and other metals industry with a view to further utilising the ConRoast pro-cess. The EFF will replace the current equity based funding structure held by Jubilee.

Kombat Copper Inc, listed on the TSX-V, has provided an update to stakeholders on its 2014 plans. The company has explo-ration/mining assets in Namibia including an 80 % stake in the Kombat copper mine in the north of the country, which was in operation between 1911 and 1925 and then again from 1962 till 2008 (when it

Smelter achieves record production rate

Kombat Copper aims to re-open Namibian mine

was closed due to the global financial crisis and water inflows). Infrastructure at the site includes a 1 100 t/day concentra-tor with a replacement value of more than US$100 million and the 800 m deep, Asis Far West shaft established in 2002 at a cost of US$30 million.

Commenting on his recent visit to the

Part of the Kombat mine complex in northern Namibia (photo: Kombat Copper).

Kombat mine site, Bill Nielsen, President and CEO of Kombat, said: “During the six weeks since my appointment as CEO, Kombat has been busy compiling histori-cal technical data and meeting with local stakeholders in Namibia.

“Already, we have greatly enhanced our understanding of the project tene-ments and opportunities and, in doing so, our team has become even more excited about the project’s potential. Our goal is to bring the Kombat mine back into produc-tion as soon as possible. To accomplish this goal, in early 2014 we plan to complete a technical report, which will provide a defi-nition of our resource as well as defining a scoping cost and schedule to complete the required work to bring the mine back into commercial production. In addition, we will be prioritising our many explo-ration targets and conducting further exploration.”

In November 2013, Kombat secured an important strategic investor in the Forbes & Manhattan and Jilin Jien Global Resources Fund (the ‘Fund’). The Fund endorses and intends to sponsor Kombat’s efforts to put the Kombat mine back into production and also expand the company’s opportu-nities in Namibia.

Stan Bharti, the Executive Chairman of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc and a director of the Fund, stated: “We are excited to be involved with Kombat. It is one of the pre-mier resource plays in Southern Africa with excellent exploration upside. Projects like the Kombat mine fit well into the Fund’s mandate, which includes re-activating pre-viously operating mines and turning around undervalued assets. Forbes & Manhattan has had significant success re-starting pre-viously operating mines, including, notably, Avion Resources in Mali (sold to Endeavour Mining in 2012) and Desert Sun in Brazil (sold to Yamana in 2006); like Kombat, both Avion and Desert Sun benefited from existing infrastructure, good location and substantial exploration upside.

“We believe Kombat will be the next suc-cess in this line. The Kombat management team and board are outstanding. The new team has excellent exploration and mine development technical skills comple-mented by board members with extensive knowledge and stakeholder relationships in Namibia.”


MINING News

Murray & Roberts officially opened its new offices in Kitwe, Zambia, in early November 2013, establishing a permanent operational base from which to support projects both in Zambia and in other key areas of the Central African infra-structure and mineral resources arenas.

Allan Widlake, Murray & Roberts Cementation’s Business Development Executive, says the opening of the Zambia office is a component of a greater growth strategy being implemented within the con-struction and engineering group that has also seen Murray & Roberts recently establish a permanent pres-ence in Ghana. The company will now focus on setting up offices in Mozambique.

Although the Group has worked on projects throughout the continent for many years, per-manent operations in these three countries will allow it to service projects in Central, East and West Africa in a more sustainable manner.

Murray & Roberts has been investing in Zambia since 1992 as Murray & Roberts RUC Zambia Ltd, before that company changed its name to Murray & Roberts Cementation Zambia. Since becoming active in that coun-try, Murray & Roberts Cementation has worked on several major projects, including shaft sink-ing and equipping the Synclinorium shaft for Mopani Copper Mines (MCM). It also recently secured a contract to sink a man/material and rock hoisting shaft at MCM’s Mufulira mine.

These projects have helped create hundreds of employment opportunities and facilitated skills transfer to the people of Zambia. Through its social development programme, the com-pany has supported a primary school in Chililabombwe in the Copperbelt province with desks and maintenance supplies.

Speaking at the official opening of the Zambia office in November, Henry Laas, Group Chief Executive of Murray & Roberts, said there was enormous opportunity for the Group in the African mining, infrastructure, building and energy sectors.

“We’re already gaining substantial traction in these markets,” he added. “We’re using the innovation, skills and expertise gained in other countries to position ourselves as market lead-ers on the African continent. We decided on

Murray & Roberts establishes Copperbelt base

Zambia as our base for Central Africa because it is a safe and friendly country, and it is also one of the fastest economically reforming countries.”

The official opening was also attended by other senior executives from the main Board of Murray & Roberts, a number of its operating platform executives, two Zambian govern-ment ministers, including the Minister of Mines, Christopher Yaluma, other government officials and senior executives from the mines.

Former Murray & Roberts Project Executive Jan Nefdt has been appointed as a local Director of Murray & Roberts Cementation Zambia, while Zambian mining industry stal-wart, Dr Sixtus Mulenga, has been appointed as in-country Non-executive Director. Dr Mulenga is a mining geologist with extensive industry experience both in Zambia and the global min-ing arena, and has held corporate executive management positions for several years.

Pictured at the official opening of Murray & Roberts’ Zambian office are Dr Sixtus Mulenga, Murray & Roberts Non Resident Executive – Zambia, and Chris Sheppard, Murray & Roberts Cementation Managing Director.

Gold producer appoints COO Goldplat plc, the AIM-listed gold producer in Africa, has announced that its current Executive Director, Hansie van Vreden, has been appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Goldplat with immediate effect. This appointment will see van Vreden take responsiblity for Goldplat’s gold recovery operations and expansion opportunities in Africa. As previously announced, Dr Robert Pitts Smith stepped down from his role as Executive Director on 31 December 2013 in line with his retirement.


MINING News

Rockwell Diamonds Inc, listed on the TSX and JSE, has reported on its quarterly pro-duction and sales for the three months ended November 30, 2013.

The company recorded a 33 % increase in third quarter volumes of gravel pro-cessed to 1,03 Mm3, of which 763 332 m3 was mined from its own Middle Orange River (MOR) operations and the balance from royalty mining contractors operat-ing at its Tirisano propery in North West Province. Total carat production grew 54 %, made up of 5 153 carats from own opera-tions and 3 995 carats from contractors. This was an all-time record quarterly carat production for the company.

Total carat sales from Rockwell’s prop-erties for the quarter increased 50 % to 6 066 carats at an average price of US$1 764 per carat, translating into 45 % growth in total revenue to US$10,7 million compared to the prior year’s third quarter (excluding beneficiation).

Rockwell’s MOR operations delivered a 117 % increase in carat sales which, together with a 24 % increase in average carat value to US$2 198 from that region, translated into a 169 % increase in value of sales to US$7,8 million. The value of sales from Tirisano mining contractors amounts to US$2,9 million, of which 12,5 % or US$357 500 accrues to Rockwell.

Volume production from Rockwell’s three MOR mines, key to Rockwell’s organic growth focus, increased by 65 % due to the commissioning of new mining infrastructure at Saxendrift Hill Complex

Rockwell delivers record quarterly carat productionand Niewejaarskraal (currently in ramp up) during the first half of fiscal 2014. The aver-age grade improved 27 %, underpinning the substantial improvement in MOR carat production from a year ago.

These results confirm Rockwell’s stra-tegic focus on its MOR operations, as the company delivers on milestones towards its mid-term target to increase monthly production volumes to 500 000 m3 to smooth its production profile and increase the recovery of large diamonds.

Commenting on third quarter produc-tion and sales, James Campbell, CEO and President, said: “We are pleased that our production and sales figures for the third quarter show that our strategy to focus on the Middle Orange River region is bearing fruit. We more than doubled our carat pro-duction and sales from these properties while the value of sales increased almost threefold to US$7,8 million and the aver-age price per carat increased 24 %.”

He noted that in the past year, Rockwell had significantly enhanced its optionality at the greater Saxendrift property (includ-ing Saxendrift, Saxendrift Extension and Saxendrift Hill Complex), with two pro-cessing plants at Saxendrift and Saxendrift Hill Complex providing the capacity to process some 240 000 m3 per month from multiple mining faces located in the tradi-tional Saxendrift mining area, Saxendrift Extension and Saxendrift Hill Complex.

“The production ramp up at Niewe-jaarskraal is on track,” he continued. “The next phase of the initial plant commis-

Rockwell’s Niewejaarskraal plant on the Middle Orange River is continuing its production ramp-up (photo: Arthur Tassell).

sioning will be completed by the end of January with the installation of an in field screen and rental bulk X-ray system, bring-ing monthly volumes to 100 000 m3. We have already confirmed the effectiveness of these fit-for-purpose technologies to handle MOR gravels, underpinning our confidence that they will enable us to optimise Niewejaarskraal mining activities. Subsequently we will turn our attention to implementing our Middle Orange River strategy at our other properties, including Wouterspan.”

Canada’s Tanzanian Royalty Exploration Corporation reports positive detailed metallurgical test results for the oxide, transition and sulphide ore resources at the Buckreef gold project in Tanzania.

Final results from column leach tests for the oxide ore resources are 71 % recov-ery for material that is crushed to 6 mm and agglomerated with 1 kg/t cement. Testwork on the sulphide and transition (semi-oxidised) resources indicates a recov-ery of 58 % using a 12,5 mm crush size and agglomeration using 4 kg/t of lime and 3 kg/t of cement. The positive results indi-cate the potential of alternative lower cost mining methods.

“With oxide and transition ore present at the Buckreef project, these metallurgi-cal results are encouraging and give us further confidence in the viability of the project at a lower cost than initially pro-jected,” said James Sinclair, President and CEO of Tanzanian Royalty Exploration. “We envision an open-pit heap leach operation, which could be very attractive at current gold prices.”

Sinclair went on to say that “as a result of decreasing gold pricing, company man-agement made the strategic decision to preserve shareholder funds by initiating a programme to explore and test for all potential low cost mining methods on our

mine targets and not be contractually bound to the most expensive means of final chemical processing for gold produc-tion. This will allow us to begin construction and mine production sooner than originally planned with significantly less engineer-ing and capital investment using existing equipment.”

He added that although moving to a lower cost mining alternative and away from high priced, fixed contract engineer-ing might result in an initial lower gold recovery percentage, the significantly lower engineering and development costs and faster lead time into production would result in improved payback and potential for self-financing expansion into other mining projects.

Buckreef ore produces positive metallurgical results


MINING News

Anglo American’s New Vaal colliery won the John T Ryan Trophy for the ‘Safest Coal Mine in South Africa’ at MineSAFE 2013.

Jointly organised by the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Association of Mine Managers of South Africa and the South African Colliery Managers Association, MineSAFE sees industry stakeholders meet to share best practice and successful strategies for safer mining environments with the goal of achieving zero harm.

With more than 1 100 employees, New Vaal has achieved 8 000 production shifts without a single loss of life, 346 days without a lost-time injury and 208 injury-free days.

The opencast mine is located in the Free State province, approximately 90 km south of Johannesburg, and covers an area of approximately 8 by 6 km.

“Zero harm can be a reality if we all work together to ensure that our operations work in a way that prevents injuries and fatali-ties,” comments General Manager Brent Hamilton. “This achievement is the result of our open management approach, respectful two-way communication and an integrated approach of promoting and living a culture where safety is non-negotiable. By working shoulder-to-shoulder with our employees, we believe that together we can improve our safety performance even further.”

ASX-listed Luiri Gold has entered into a binding Heads of Agreement (HOA) with African-based mining contractor Bamboo Rock for the sale of a 75 % majority stake in Luiri Gold’s subsidiaries that hold the Luiri Hill gold project in Zambia. Luiri will retain a contributing 25 % equity stake and operational input in the project via a share-holder agreement to be negotiated.

The Luiri Hill project currently consists of two large scale mining licences covering a total area of 277 km2. The tenements have a 25-year renewable term and combined with the recently issued Environmental Permit have all necessary rights to com-mence mining.

The licence within which both the Dunrobin and Matala projects lie was can-celled in July 2010. Upon its reinstatement in September 2011 a key condition of the renewal agreement with the Zambian government was that Luiri should by 14 December 2013 “….be in a position to complete project implementation, secure the requisite statutory permits for its oper-ations, have commenced construction of the mining operation and have secured the requisite financing to complete a fully operational Large Scale Mine in line with the development plan which shall be submitted to the Respondent [Ministry of Mines] within a reasonable period of time from the filing of this consent settlement order;… .”

Luiri has previously advised that the only remaining outstanding requirement of the reinstatement consent settlement order was to secure the requisite financing to commence construction. The company says that it considers that the binding HOA satisfies this requirement.

In support of this view, the company has mobilised a grader and dozer to the Dunrobin site to commence develop-ment activities. The grader is upgrading the access road into the Dunrobin site area, making it fit for the delivery of major mining equipment during 2014. The dozer has commenced the cleanup of the Dunrobin pit in preparation for mining activities in 2014. Further, the company has commenced the process of discharg-ing pre-development conditions required under the terms of its Environmental Permit.

I t is envisaged that Bamboo will

New Vaal earns top safety accolade

Bamboo Rock to acquire control of Zambian gold project

release an updated development plan for Dunrobin shortly. Bamboo believes that the current Dunrobin development plan can be altered such that the existing prob-able ore reserve (estimated in accordance with the 2004 edition of the JORC Code) of 87 000 oz can be profitably mined over a three-year period rather than the present plan to mine over a six-year period.

This advanced mining schedule should result in an earlier repayment of capi-tal costs and allow earlier mining of the existing resources at Matala. Subject to further studies it is also possible that the advanced proximal target areas (for example, Shadreck and Chosa) will also be mined sooner than previously planned. Luiri points out, however, that there is no certainty that these target areas will prove

to be economic and further exploration of these areas is required to determine if they can be economically developed.

Bamboo Rock is an African focused opencast mining and infrastructure devel-opment specialist which was formed in 2009. It currently has four major contracts in Tanzania comprising contract mining for Shanta Gold, a 200 km road contract, an infrastructure project and one mid-tier mining contract. It has over 600 employees and an equipment fleet of in excess of 60 machines. The principal of Bamboo, Gerald Chapman, was the founder and largest shareholder in ProTech Khuthele Holdings Ltd, a mining and contracting business he built from a private base into a JSE-listed company with a current market capitalisa-tion of R400 million.

The Dunrobin pit at the Luiri Hills gold project west of Lusaka in Zambia. A grader and dozer have been mobilised to the Dunrobin site to commence development activities (photo: Luiri Gold).


MINING News

AEL Mining Services (AEL), Northern Cape – Southern Region reports that it set a new African record for the largest number of DigiShot™ Plus detonators fired simultane-ously on 6 November last year at Kumba Iron Ore’s Kolomela mine. A blast contain-ing 4 786 detonators was fired in the newly opened Klipbankfontein pit.

Morne Stiglingh, MD for Open Pit and Massive Mining at AEL, says the new record was 2 100 detonators more than the previ-ous African record (also at Kolomela) and a mere 332 short of the world record of 5 118 detonators.

Stiglingh says the aim of the blast was to minimise blast stoppages in the newly established pit and to showcase AEL’s

SRK to prepare report on Botswanan iron ore projectCanada’s Tsodilo Resources, listed on the TSX-V, has engaged SRK Consulting (UK) to prepare an initial National Instrument 43-101 compliant Mineral Resource Estimate and Technical Report for its Botswana subsidiary, Gcwihaba Resources, on a portion of the Xaudum iron ore project.

The Xaudum Iron Formation (XIF) is located in the northern portion of the Ngamiland region in the North-West District of Botswana. The XIF generally does not out-crop and is considered a buried prospect. The XIF is buried below the ‘Kalahari cover’ (made up of sand and calcrete) and has been delin-eated for exploration drilling using detailed ground magnetic surveys conducted by Tsodilo over the area. The ground magnetic survey comprises 18 000 line kilometres on lines 50 m apart with readings taken approxi-mately every 5 m and covers 1 600 km2.

Drilling to date has confirmed that the XIF is comprised of two units: a Magnetite Banded Iron Formation (BIF) unit, which can be weathered near surface (just below the Kalahari cover); and a Magnetite Schist unit, which can also be weathered near surface.

These units are significantly magnetic, although the Magnetite BIF is more mag-netic and can be considered a high grade magnetite unit, whereas the Magnetite Schist represents a less magnetic but potentially more widespread lower grade target unit.

Recent metallurgical Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) test work confirmed the premium grade magnetite product potential of the Xaudum project, where all mineralised units are capa-ble of producing premium grade magnetite product of >68 % Fe and very low deleterious elements. The DTR test work confirmed that the coarse grained nature of the mineralisa-tion allowed for good concentrate grades at relatively coarse grind sizes. Good mass recov-eries were achieved for all mineralised units given the amount of magnetic minerals in the starting material. Further to this, the test work also confirms that partially oxidised (weath-ered) material can still be separated with higher than expected mass recoveries.

“Tsodilo is pleased to be working with SRK on its Xaudum iron ore project,” says James M. Bruchs, Tsodilo’s Chairman and CEO. “SRK’s global experience and in-house expertise in similar magnetite iron ore projects to the Xaudum Iron Formation are second to none, and will provide the range of services we require to advance this project in a timely manner.”

Record-breaking blast at KolomelaThe record-breaking blast at Kumba’s Kolomela mine.

capability of delivering superior products and services. Minimising stoppages posi-tively affects production and subsequently helps the client expose ore quicker.

Nine blast blocks and a presplit were fired in various positions in the Klipbankfontein pit. A crew of ten AEL members worked for 14 days in temperatures above 30 deg Celsius to make this possible.

The success of the blast has enabled the mine to change its methodology by hav-ing the confidence to fire fewer and larger blasts to minimise mining interruptions.

Subsequent to this, a second blast con-taining 4 787 detonators was fired, further improving the African record by one deto-nator.

Gold resource at Mpokoto lifted by 35 %AIM-quoted, London-based Armadale has announced an updated JORC-compliant resource estimate at the Mpokoto gold project in the south-west of the DRC’s Katanga Province.

The project’s total mineral resource has increased by 35 % to 510 000 oz gold from 11,2 Mt at 1,42 g/t Au at a cut-off grade of 0,5 g/t (previous resource of 380 000 oz Au from 7,2 Mt at 1,65 g /t at a 0,5 g/t cut-off). Some 65 % of the updated resource is in the indicated category.

The updated resource estimate is based upon the completion of an additional 21 diamond drill holes completed since the last resource estimate and a recent re-interpretation of the geology from164 holes drilled for a total of 18 142 m con-

ducted by previous owners of the project.According to Armadale, considerable

further upside potential is left with the exploration target being 10 to 15 Mt at 1,2 to 1,5 g/t Au.

Comments Justin Lewis, Director of Armadale: “I am delighted to announce this 35 % increase in the total gold mineral resource estimate at Mpokoto, demon-strating the Board’s belief that the project has considerable further scope to become a highly attractive pre-production gold asset. ... Our activities remain focused on the further delineation of gold resource ounces, together with the additional criti-cal development work required ahead of low cost commercial gold production tar-geted within the next two years.”


MINING News

Canada’s Lucara Diamond Corp has released an updated mineral resource esti-mate for the Karowe mine in Botswana. A significant population of large and exceptional diamonds has been recov-ered during mining operations over the past year at Karowe and these larger dia-monds have now been factored into the mineral resource estimate resulting in a greater than US$1 billion increase in the estimated in-situ value of the indicated mineral resource.

The updated mineral resource estimate was completed by Mineral Services Canada Inc taking into account mining activities at Karowe since the start of production in April 2012 and includes changes to the geological model, re-interpretation of dia-mond size distributions, and the results of all diamond sales.

The highlights of the mineral resource update, valid at the cut-off date of 21 October 2013, are: a recoverable indicated mineral resource estimate at a 1,25 mm

bottom cut-off size of 46,2 Mt at an average grade of 16 carats per hundred tonne (cpht) with an average mod-elled diamond value of US$394 per carat; and a recoverable inferred mineral resource of approximately 21 Mt at an average grade of 14 cpht with an aver-age modelled diamond value of US$412 per carat.

The recovery of sig-nificant numbers of large and high value diamonds from the centre and south lobes of the mineral resource being mined at Karowe has resulted in a positive change to the modelled and recovered size frequency distribution, significantly increasing the overall modelled average price per carat for the Karowe mine compared to the pre-

Larger diamonds factored into resource estimate

vious mineral resource estimate.In 2013, Lucara sold more than 438 000

carats of diamonds for gross proceeds in excess of US$180 million. Included in these were 23 diamonds which sold for over US$1 million, including nine diamonds which sold for more than US$3 million each.

The Karowe processing plant includes Botswana’s first AG mill.


MINING News

After 27 years as a full professor at the School of Mining Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand, Huw Phillips has been honoured with the status of Professor Emeritus for his outstanding contribution to the institution.

He was also recently named as the 2013 winner of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy’s prestigious Brigadier Stokes Memorial Award for his unique input to the industry over many years.

“Professor Phillips has excelled at every-thing he had been asked to do within the School and was appointed Head of Mining Engineering from January 1986,” said Professor Fred Cawood, current Head of School. “His main contributions are mainly in the areas of research – where he success-fully supervised 19 PhDs and 40 MScs.

“He gave the School tremendous ser-vice during his 25-year tenure as Head of School. His standing in the profession is extremely high and he was recently hon-oured by the Institute of Mine Surveyors of SA, the Mine Ventilation Society of SA and the International Society of Mining Professors.”

Professor Phillips stepped down as Head of School at the end of 2009, but continued as the Chair of Mining Engineering until his retirement in 2012. He continues to work in a post-retirement capacity, supervis-

Wits honours Professor Huw Phillipsing postgraduate students, implementing the new mine ventilation area of postgradu-ate specialisation, and serving on the School’s executive com-mittee and editorial boards.

He began his career with an electrical engineering degree working for the National Coal Board, the agency tasked with running the coal mines of the United Kingdom. He soon returned to his studies, this time in mining engineering at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

His work focused on improving the productivity of the country’s collieries through mechanisation – at a time when some underground operations still used pit ponies to haul coal and equipment. He then became involved in research into tun-nelling, a field in which important strides were being taken at that time.

But underlying much of his growing expertise was a pre-occupation with health and safety. He had grown up in a village just 6 km from Aberfan, where a tragic coal-tip slide in 1966 killed 144 peo-ple – 116 of them schoolchildren. He had arrived home from university on the day of the disaster for a family function, and was part of the recovery operations alongside hundreds of local residents.

When he took up a lecturing post at the University of New South Wales in Australia, this provided an outlet for these concerns. While productivity in the Australian coal mining industry was much higher than in the UK, this had also resulted in growing health and safety hazards such as higher methane and dust levels, and even under-ground explosions. He began working on designs that would address these health and safety issues.

After spending his sabbatical leave in South Africa in 1981 with the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation – then the largest private research establishment in the southern hemisphere – he returned in 1985 as Chamber of Mines Professor of Mining Engineering at Wits, becoming Head of Department later the same year.

Professor Huw Phillips (left) receiving his Professor Emeritus Certificate from Professor Fred Cawood, Head of the Wits School of Mining Engineering.

Paragon Diamonds has announced the signing of a memorandum of understand-ing (MOU) between Meso Diamonds, its 85 %-owned Lesotho subsidiary, and Mothae Diamonds, Lucara Diamond Corp’s Lesotho subsidiary, to acquire the kim-berlite processing and diamond recovery plant located at the Mothae kimberlite in Lesotho.

The plant is located 60 km from Paragon’s 85 %-owned Lemphane project with good connecting roads (52 km of which are on the main public road supplying the Kao and Liqhobong mines). Relocation of the plant is expected to commence in Q1 2014 after minimal site preparations at Lemphane.

Paragon plans to initiate Stage I produc-tion by Q3 2014, with this stage covering a two-year period during which time it is intended that 1 Mt of kimberlite will be

mined and processed for the expected recovery of at least 20 000 carats at an esti-mated average value of US$750 per carat at a provisional 2 mm production cut-off.

The plant being acquired has the capac-ity to treat 500 000 t/a and has been demonstrated to be highly effective in the recovery of large diamonds using coarse-X-ray sorting technology with minimal diamond breakage despite a large dia-mond size being processed.

The plant flow-sheet will be amended as required and appropriate to the character-istics of the Lemphane kimberlite.

Plant operations will be managed by Paradigm Project Management (PPM). Meso Diamond’s 15 % shareholder, the Matekane Group, will undertake mining. Both companies have extensive experience of kimberlite mining in Lesotho.

Paragon expects to produce some

800-1 000 carats per month during Stage I production. Based on preliminary size fre-quency distributions, comparable to the Mothae kimberlite, the recovery of up to 2 000 carats of ‘special’ stones plus (9,8 car-ats) is anticipated, including diamonds of up to 100 carats in size.

“We are delighted to be acquiring Mothae Diamonds’ processing plant from Lucara,” says Dr Stephen Grimmer, Paragon’s MD. “Not only is it perfect for our needs but it is also in close proximity leading to much reduced costs for the company, with further cost savings and support coming through the acquisition being mostly satisfied in Paragon Diamonds shares.

“Together with the existing infrastruc-ture at Lemphane and a very experienced team of contractors with whom we have long-term working relationships, this should allow us to deliver a robust and low-cost mining programme in the short-est possible time.”

Paragon to purchase processing plant from Mothae


MINING News

Ferrex, the AIM-quoted iron ore and man-ganese development company, reports it has signed a binding Term Sheet with Anglo American and Kumba Iron Ore, a leading supplier of iron ore and member of the Anglo American group, to advance its Mebaga DSO iron ore project in Gabon.

In summary, the Term Sheet outlines a transaction whereby Anglo American and Kumba fund the exploration of Mebaga and surrounding areas over a period of up to two years and includes a provision to refund Ferrex for the majority of the exploration spend to date. The term sheet also allows Anglo American and Kumba to move to 100 % ownership of the project at its election via a purchase arrangement or alternatively for Ferrex to maintain 100 % ownership of Mebaga if Anglo American and Kumba do not elect to purchase the project. Exploration will be managed by Anglo American and Kumba; however, it will utilise the existing in-country explora-tion team of Ferrex.

“This represents a significant milestone for Ferrex,” says Ferrex’s MD, Dave Reeve. “To have secured the interest of a major

Canada’s Banro Corporation has announced that its Namoya mine in the DRC successfully began gold production with the pouring of the first 320 ounces on December 30, 2013 during the hot commissioning of the heap leach loaded carbon, elution and electro-winning operations. The completion of the building of the Namoya plant will continue in step with commissioning operations into Q1 2014. Commercial production is expected to be achieved before the end of Q2 2014. Namoya is Banro’s second gold mine to come into production in just over two years.

Production at Namoya is scheduled to transform Banro from a one-mine com-pany with less than 100 000 ounces of annual gold production to a two-mine company targeting more than 225 000 ounces of annual gold production.

“We would like to thank our professional operations teams, business partners, con-sultants, regional governments and the local communities for assisting us in this significant achievement. We look forward

AIM-listed Shanta Gold has released its pre-liminary production results for the quarter ended 31 December 2013, as well as its 2013 full year production at its New Luika Gold Mine in south-west Tanzania.

Gold production for the quarter was 19 581 ounces, an increase of 3,64 % on the previous quarter, giving total full year production of 64 054 ounces, which is mar-ginally above the production guidance of 63 000 ounces.

Throughput in the processing plant

increased and has stabilised at the target 1 275 tonnes per day; consequently con-sistent gold production of just over 6 500 ounces per month was achieved in Q4.

“I am very pleased with the level and consistency of production that we have achieved thus far at New Luika and am confident that we have a good platform for further throughput and production increases in the year ahead,” comments Mike Houston, Shanta’s CEO.

Banro’s Namoya mine pours its first gold

The Namoya site as it was in October last year.

to continued growth, new business oppor-tunities and a long association with the DRC,” comments Dr John Clarke, President and CEO of Banro.

The Namoya mine is located on the Twangiza-Namoya gold belt, approxi-

mately 210 km south-west of Banro’s Twangiza gold mine which began pro-duction in October 2011. Namoya is an open-pit mining operation with a hybrid gravity/Carbon in Leach (CIL) and heap leach extraction process.

mining house such as Anglo American and the operational experience of Kumba Iron Ore reinforces our confidence in Mebaga as a leading DSO iron ore project in West Africa, and of Gabon as a desirable mining investment destination.

“We believe Mebaga has significant value uplift potential, highlighted by the exploration target of 90 to 150 Mt at 35 to 65 % Fe and 550 Mt to 900 Mt at 25 % to 40 % Fe defined over an 8 km strike length of a total 19 km strike identified at the proj-

Anglo and Kumba back iron ore project in Gabon

Shanta pushes up quarterly production

ect. With Anglo American managing the project utilising our highly experienced in-country team, Mebaga will benefit from leading technical expertise whilst maximising the exploration work under-taken, providing Ferrex with access to substantial value accretion whilst minimis-ing exposure to exploration expenditure. Due diligence is targeted for completion in February 2014 and at this point the full commercial terms of the agreement will be announced to the market.”


COVER STORY

To some extent, BME has been in-sulated from the worst of the min-ing slowdown. Says Hay: “While mining worldwide has taken a knock, conditions in South Af-

rica have been particularly severe. We’ve been cushioned from the worst effects for two rea-sons. Firstly, the underground mining sector in South Africa – primarily gold and platinum – has borne the brunt of the cutbacks and this is a market which only accounts for a relatively small proportion of our turnover. As I’m sure you’re aware, our biggest strength lies in open-cast mining where we are the market leader in South Africa. Secondly, a very healthy – and

fast-growing – proportion of our business de-rives from the African market outside of South Africa and this remains reasonably buoyant, particularly the Copperbelt region of Zambia and Katanga in the DRC.”

Part of the Omnia Group, which recorded a total revenue of R13,5 billion in its 2013 finan-cial year, BME and its sister company Protea Mining Chemicals (which constitute Omnia’s mining division) made a major contribution to the Group’s financial results for the six months to 30 September 2013 (the first half of FY2014), accounting for R2,8 billion of the total Group revenue of R7,5 billion and con-tributing R453 million to an operating profit of R628 million. This R453 million was 35 % up on the 2013 figure although the profit margin – at 16,5 % compared to 16,7 % – was margin-ally lower.

Looking at the highlights of BME’s order book, Hay says a bright spot in South Africa is the company’s contract – secured a year ago – to supply all BHP Billiton’s South African mines. “We were delighted when we were awarded this contract, as we had previously shared it with a competitor, and it certainly ranks as a flagship contract for us,” notes Hay. “Across border, we’re very happy with the business we have in Zambia, where we have well over 30 clients, spread over the mining, quarrying and civil engineering sectors, and we’ve also made inroads into the DRC, where we are now sup-plying some of ENRC’s operations, including the Frontier copper mine.”

The Zambian market ranks as the biggest for BME in Africa, after South Africa, and the company maintains a regional head office in

BME holds its own in a difficult market

Below: Charging HEF 100 in a Gauteng quarry. Each hole is measured for depth prior to charging.

Leading explosives supplier BME, which is about to celebrate its 30th year in business, has, remarkably, continued to

grow over the past year despite the travails experienced by the mining sector. “There’s no question that this is the most challenging market we’ve faced in some time but

we’ve nevertheless turned in a good performance in recent months,” says MD Francois Hay (left). “But the momentum in

mining continues to slow so we’ll have to be on top of our game if we want to maintain our growth in 2014.”


COVER STORY

A dramatic, close-up view of a blast with excellent frag-mentation being achieved.

Chingola on the Copperbelt, which has recently been expanded, as well as depots in several other centres. BME’s single biggest Zambian cli-ent is First Quantum’s Kansanshi copper mine, the largest in Africa (and still growing). BME opened a modular bulk emulsion plant at the mine in 2008 – which has since been expanded – and has more than 80 employees deployed at the site. So important is Zambia to BME that the company in mid-2013 hosted a drilling and blasting conference in Chingola attended by 60 delegates – modelled on the highly suc-cessful conferences it holds annually in South Africa – and also a workshop on open-pit blast-ing techniques in Solwezi (near the Kansanshi mine). In addition, it has partnered with the University of the Copperbelt in Kitwe on an upgrade of its engineering facilities.

Elsewhere in the Southern African region, BME is doing well in Botswana, where it is sup-plying explosives to the huge Cut-8 project at Jwaneng, and in Namibia, where it is supplies product to Langer Heinrich uranium mine. Of course, the big Namibian contract that all the explosives companies are waiting for is the Husab opencast uranium mine. Now in the early stages of construction, Husab is said to be Africa’s biggest current mining project and is on such a scale – the mining operation will employ electric rope shovels and 327-t capacity haul trucks – that it will generate a substantial demand for explosives.

“We are also active in Mozambique, but pri-marily in civils and quarrying,” says Hay. “The Tete coalfield has not developed at the pace that was expected due to market conditions globally and infrastructural constraints and there have also been security concerns in the Tete area recently. Nevertheless, Mozambique remains high on our agenda and we see huge potential

in the country – which is why, in conjunction with Omnia’s agricultural division, we’ve set up an office in Tete.”

Further north in Africa, BME is supply-ing quarries in Tanzania and has also picked up some mining business in Eritrea. In West Africa, where it has operated since the late 1990s, it remains busy at gold, iron ore and zinc mines in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone, with its latest contract award being for Resolute Mining’s Syama gold mine in southern Mali, an open-pit operation which produced nearly 200 000 ounces of gold in Resolute’s 2013 financial year. Hay notes that some big contracts for West African mines are currently out on tender, including for Randgold Resources’ portfolio of mines in Mali, Ivory Coast and the northern-eastern DRC, as well as Kinross’ Tasiast gold mine in Mauritania.

Overseas, BME has started trading in Indo-nesia (mainly in ammonium nitrate) and also recently established an Australian subsidiary to market its electronic detonator technology, AXXIS™, which it believes is a world-beating digital initiation system. “BME’s primary focus remains Africa but we are tentatively putting a foot into overseas markets,” Hay observes.

Discussing BME’s product line-up, Hay says the past year has seen a continuation of the trend to bring more and more product in-house in terms of development and manufacture. “In the past, we have been reliant, or partially so, on third parties for certain products and materials,” explains Hay. “At one point, for example, we were not self-sufficient in ammo-nium nitrate in Southern Africa and had to source some of our requirements from external sources. This has now been rectified with the opening – in 2012 – of the Omnia Group’s new state-of-the-art R1,4 billion nitric acid plant in


COVER STORY

Sasolburg, which has allowed us to grow our business without having to worry about con-straints on the raw materials side.

“Similarly, we’ve very successfully rolled out our own boosters – the Viper™ and Hornet™ ranges – over the past 18 months, not only to the South African market but also across Africa. Here again, we used to be dependent on a com-petitor but now have total control over the design and manufacture. We’ve also increased our in-house capacity to build the emulsion and heavy ANFO trucks (Mobile Mining Units or MMUs) which are used to deliver down-the-hole product to mine sites and are planning to build 45 trucks this year. The delivery time on these trucks has – as a result – been cut drasti-cally, allowing us to mobilise very rapidly for new contracts.”

Identifying trends in the explosives market, Hay says that digital initiation is continu-ing to grow in popularity with BME’s system, AXXIS™, picking up “fantastic momentum”. The system allocates precise firing times to det-onators, allowing engineers to design complex firing sequences in a blast. Holes can be timed to the nearest millisecond, giving the choice of up to 10 000 pre-programmed delays within a 10-second period. Advantages of the system include highly accurate blasting, better frag-mentation, ease of use and a high level of safety.

Comments Hay: “Digital initiation systems are gaining increasing market share and our experience is that clients never turn back once they see the benefits in terms of productivity and down the line profitability. We believe it is only a matter of time before they become the main method of initiating blastholes in open-pit mines. Of course, all our competitors offer simi-lar systems but our offering is fully comparable to anything else on the market and extremely competitive in terms of cost. Moreover, it’s sup-ported by BlastMap III, the latest generation of our blast and timing design software.”

Hay also points to a move towards the use of re-pumpable emulsions in underground mines. “We’re well placed to take advantage of this trend, given that our Megapump range of double-salt emulsions – used in both opencast and underground operations – is highly stable and can be pumped and re-pumped multiple times,” states Hay. “Megapump allows mines to get around the time consuming process of moving conventional explosives underground, including dedicated shaft and locomotive cycles. Instead, emulsion can be pumped from surface to the underground workings safely, quickly and cheaply. The safety derives from the fact that the emulsion is only sensitised

in-situ in the blasthole, just prior to the blast taking place.”

He adds that the stability of Megapump – which contains an ammonium nitrate and calcium nitrate mix – is important as most emulsions available locally can only be re-pumped about three times before they start to break down, which means that they can-not stand up to the number of pumping cycles required to get them from surface to the work-place. “Megapump is so stable and durable that we are aware of one of our customers charg-ing blastholes with it six months before they were detonated – which is quite remarkable,” he says.

Looking forward, Hay repeats his view that the coming year will be challenging. “We’re expecting volumes to be down as mines are forced to mine more selectively but we’re entirely comfortable with this and we’ll be partnering with our customers to ensure that – in terms of blasting – they achieve the econo-mies they are looking for,” he says. “Certainly the emphasis must be on giving customers what they want, rather than what we want, and this is a guiding principle for us. In the medium-term, we remain optimistic about the demand for commodities and believe that the present weak market is temporary. Indeed, there are already some signs of a global economic recov-ery. To sum up, we anticipate continued growth for BME over the next 12 months, though pos-sibly not at the levels that we’ve seen in recent years.”Report by Arthur Tassell, photos courtesy of BME

A BME blasting engineer preparing survey instrumen-tation to measure the face geometry of the rock to be blasted.


COMPANIES

According to Digby Glover, the CEO of WorleyParsons South Africa, the change will take ef-fect from this year’s Mining Ind-aba in Cape Town. “There is a

certain sadness in seeing the disappearance of the TWP name from the mining scene but it is nevertheless necessary to remove the potential confusion to customers and offer an extended range of services to our customers,” he says.

WorleyParsons’ initial entry into South Africa was via a joint venture in 2008 with Pangaea Petroleum which led to the forma-tion of WorleyParsons South Africa. The group expanded its local presence with the acquisition in 2011 of KV3, a leading multi-dis-ciplinary consulting engineering practice. Says Glover: “The new combined WorleyParsons South Africa has approximately 2 000 employ-ees, roughly half coming from what was WorleyParsonsTWP, all working under a single management and based at a number of offices around South Africa, the biggest being those in Melrose Arch (Johannesburg), Pretoria and Cape Town.” He adds that work is well advanced on a new purpose-built office complex in Melrose Arch which can accommodate around 1 200 WorleyParsons South Africa employees and which is expected to be complete in the second quarter of this year.

A Wits-educated mechanical engineer who started his career with Gold Fields, Glover joined TWP in 2001, eventually becoming CEO of TWP Holdings. In the wake of the WorleyParsons aquisition, he became Chief Operating Officer of WorleyParsons South Africa, a position he held until November last year when he was promoted to the Chief Executive’s position. He reports to Francis

McNiff, WorleyParsons’ Managing Director Operations – Sub-Saharan Africa.

The appointment of a South African to head the WorleyParsons operation in South Africa is very much in accordance with the WorleyParsons credo of ‘Local delivery, global support’ whereby operations in particular regions remain local in flavour and focus but operate with the support – and using the sys-tems – of the wider WorleyParsons group.

With its big employee complement, WorleyParsons South Africa will undoubt-edly rank as one of the largest engineering and project delivery businesses operating on the African continent. It also forms part of one of the biggest engineering groups in the world, as WorleyParsons globally employs 38 700 people in 165 offices in 43 countries. The group operates in three sectors of the market – Hydrocarbons; Minerals, Metals & Chemicals;

Since its acquisition by WorleyParsons in March last year, TWP has been op-erating under the name WorleyParsonsTWP, in parallel with WorleyParsons South Africa, a company established several years ago when Worley Parsons first entered the South African market. With the transitional phase of the TWP acquisition now over, the TWP name is to be dropped and Worley-ParsonsTWP will in future operate under the WorleyParsons South Africa banner as part of a single, unified WorleyParsons presence in South Africa.

Shaft sinking at Wesizwe’s Bakubung Platinum Mine in the Western Bushveld. WorleyParsons South Africa is the EPCM contractor on the project.

Digby Glover, CEO of WorleyParsons South Africa.

WorleyParsons merges its SA business units


COMPANIES

and Infrastructure (incorporating Environment and Power) – and in FY2013 recorded revenues of A$6,2 billion and a net profit after tax of A$390,5 million.

While WorleyParsons has always operated in the Minerals & Metals space, its acquisition of TWP has given it an expertise in underground mining and precious metals processing which was previously relatively limited. Says Glover: “We envisage WorleyParsons South Africa developing into the global mining hub of the WorleyParsons group, serving not just mining projects within Africa but around the world. Of course, this will not be at the expense of the other offerings available from the South African operation and we will continue to expand our already large involvement in the other market sectors we target, particularly infrastructure and power.”

Referring specifically to mining projects, Glover says that increasingly these require not just mining expertise but also the provision of related infrastructure, including rail lines, roads, water and power supply, and housing. “WorleyParsons South Africa can now supply all these skills and provide a total all-in-one solution to the customer,” he says. “While we have not seen too many of these types of proj-ects in Africa as yet, they are clearly coming – examples are some of the planned or pro-posed iron ore projects in West Africa, which typically have a very high infrastructural component.”

Reviewing current business conditions, Glover says the South African business is doing well, despite the downturn in mining and a subdued infrastructure market. “On the mining side, we still have a very healthy portfolio of shaft projects, including Styldrift, Bakubung, Shondoni and Impala No 17 shaft, most of which have some way to run,” he notes. “Then, of course, we’re in the early stages of the Venetia Underground Project, which is a hugely excit-ing project for us and which is destined to become one of our flagship contracts. We also continue to engage with Kumba Iron Ore, which has emerged as one of our biggest customers, at both its Sishen and Thabazimbi mines.

“Further afield in Africa, we’ve designed the vertical shaft for Randgold’s Kibali gold proj-ect in the DRC and we’re also working with the DRC state copper miner, Gecamines, on its metals refineries. In West Africa, we’re doing some work for Randgold in Mali and we’re also undertaking study work for a project in Mauritania.”

Offshore, WorleyParsons South Africa has just been awarded the feasibility study for

the exploration shaft at the Wafi-Golpu gold-copper project in Papua New Guinea, a joint venture between Harmony Gold and Newcrest. “This contract shows the importance of being a part of a group with global reach, as the initial engagement on this project was undertaken by WorleyParsons in Australia,” observes Glover.

Turning to the infrastructure side of the busi-ness, Glover says a recent major success for WorleyParsons South Africa has been the award of a Project Management Contract (PMC) for the Nacala Rail Corridor project in Mozambique. This will provide a 584 km rail link – with an 18 Mt/a capacity – between Vale’s Moatize mine near Tete through to the Port of Nacala in north-eastern Mozambique.

Commenting on his own priorities over the coming months, Glover makes the point that he will be interacting more fully with the market, after a period when much of his time was spent on bedding down the acquisition of TWP by WorleyParsons. “The acquisition process has gone really well, partly because WorleyParsons has a wealth of experience in this area and partly because TWP itself was in extremely good shape at the time of the acquisition,” he says. “Nevertheless, the process always has some wrinkles in it and ironing these out has consumed a great deal of management attention over the past few months.

“The time is now ripe to let the market-place know that WorleyParsons South Africa is a single cohesive unit specialising in proj-ect delivery in multiple markets – and this, in fact, is the message we want to get across at the Indaba. Looking ahead, we accept that some of our markets, particularly mining, are in a downturn but we’re nevertheless reason-ably optimistic about prospects and believe that WorleyParsons South Africa will grow its business over the coming year.”

Ball mill and drive train forming part of a recent expansion at Gold Field’s South Deep metallurgical plant. The project – under-taken on an EPCM basis by the then TWP – illustrates the skills WorleyParsons South Africa has in the field of precious metals process-ing.


EVENTS

South Africa’s Minister of Mineral Resources, Susan Shabangu, is scheduled to give the opening ad-dress while delegates – around 8 000 are expected, roughly half

from Africa – can look forward to listening to an excellent line-up of keynote speakers who will make presentations on a range of topics including the state of African mining, the out-look for commodities and South African min-ing opportunities.

Launching the series of keynotes strategi-cally positioned throughout the conference is Canadian consultant Phil Newman, CEO of CRU Strategies. With a background in mining engineering, he will discuss the changing face of world mineral supply on the preliminary day of Mining Indaba 2014.

Eleni Gabre-Madhin, recently named one of the 100 Most Influential Africans, will deliver a keynote address on the theme ‘Investing in Africa – What will it take’. As founder of the acclaimed Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, she successfully managed to achieve trading of U$1,2 billion in three years.

Focusing on win-win mining scenarios for investors, mining companies and governments and bringing a wealth of practical parliamen-tary experience to the podium is Colin Barnett. He served as Western Australia’s Premier, Minister for State Development and Minister of Science.

Mining and sustainable development will be discussed by Professor Paul Collier, Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies

Mining Indaba turns 20

A scene from last year’s African Mining Indaba. Around 8 000 delegates are expected to at-tend this year’s event (photo: Mining Indaba LLC).

This year’s African Mining Indaba, which

is being held from 3-6 February at the

Cape Town Interna-tional Convention

Centre, is the 20th in the series and all the

signs are that it will be as big as ever – last year’s event attracted

over 7 800 delegates – despite subdued con-

ditions in the global mining industry.

at the University of Oxford and adviser to the International Monetary Fund’s Strategy and Policy Department.

Makhtar Diop’s keynote address will be informed by World Bank experience, currently as Vice-President for the Africa Region and previously in Brazil in particular and South America and the Caribbean in general.

Keynote panels will allow stimulating dis-cussion on themes such as the current status and future outlook for African mining and the impact of Asian growth on African min-ing. Participating in both topics will be Frank Holmes, advisor on sustainable development to the William J. Clinton Foundation and to the International Crisis Group. CEO and Chief Investment Officer of US Global Investors, Inc he manages award-winning mutual funds and hedge funds in the natural resources, emerging markets and infrastructure sectors.

Engaging with him is David Hale of David Hale Associates, the Chicago-based economist renowned for his global market research and insights. As well as writing for major publica-tions, he is also currently co-authoring a book on the Chinese economy.

Another familiar face will be Ivanhoe’s Robert Friedland, who normally attracts a ‘standing room’ only audience at his Indaba presenta-tions. This year, as last, he will be presenting on Ivanhoe’s ‘World Class’ discoveries, notably the Platreef PGM project in South Africa and the Kamoa copper discovery in the DRC. Both projects are now at relatively advanced stages, with a contract for an 800 m-deep bulk sample shaft having been awarded for the Platreef and with work on an underground mine-access decline at Kamoa due to start this year.

Friedland will also participate in a panel discussion on South African Mining Opportunities, with the other panelists being Harmony Gold CEO Graham Briggs, and Exxaro CEO Sipho Nkosi.

Apart from the keynote addresses and panel discussions, all the other elements that have made the Mining Indaba a winner over so many years will be present at this year’s event, including the mainstage corporate presenta-tions, where mining companies update on their activities and prospects, the African Mining Ministerial Forum, and the Ministerial VIP Networking Programme.Further information: www.miningindaba.com.


Probably the biggest of the proj-ects we cover this year is First Quantum’s roughly US$2 bil-lion Trident development in Zambia’s North-Western Prov-

ince, which is involving the construction of two mines – Sentinel, a huge (55 Mt/a of ore) new open-pit copper mine, and Enterprise, an open-pit nickel mine. Sen-tinel is by far the bigger – and also the more advanced – of the two mines and is due to come on stream later this year, ul-timately producing between 260 000 and 300 000 t/a of copper.

Sentinel’s complement of mining equip-ment will include three Caterpillar rope shovels and three Komatsu PC5500 exca-vators, as well as a truck fleet incorporating Komatsu 960E ultra-class haulers, while the processing plant will have the biggest mills yet seen in the mining field.

In the diamond mining field, we focus on Gem Diamonds’ new Ghaghoo mine in the Central Kalahari and De Beers’ Venetia Underground Project. The latter is an enor-mous undertaking which will replace the

current open pit and, in terms of capex, is on a par with Trident – although the money will be spent over a much longer timeframe. By comparison, Ghaghoo is a fairly small project – but with the capacity to grow into a substantial operation.

Ghaghoo is notable for the fact that it will mine a kimberlite buried underneath 80 m of Kalahari sand cover. Although initial plans were to develop the project as an open-pit mine, Gem Diamonds – in the wake of the financial meltdown of 2008 – decided to opt for a smaller underground development and the mine will, in fact, be Botswana’s first underground diamond mine. The kimberlite is accessed by a decline, much of which has been excavated through the Kalahari sand using an Open Face Tunnel Shield. Use of a shield to develop a decline is highly unusual and perhaps even unique. Gem Diamonds is now through the sand and, when Modern Mining recently visited the site, was well advanced on the hard rock portion of the decline.

The R20 billion Venetia Underground Project (VUP) in Limpopo Province

SOUTHERN AFRICA’S TOP FIVE MINING PROJECTSWith the mining industry

having been in a downturn over the past year, identifying

and covering suitable proj-ects for inclusion in our Top Five feature has been more

challenging than normal. Nevertheless, we think we

have come up with an excel-lent line-up of outstanding

projects, all of them notable for their size or innovation – or both. Two of them are diamond mining develop-ments, two will mine cop-

per (and, in the case of one, nickel as well) while a fifth is

a new gold mine in a country – Namibia – not noted for its

gold endowment.

Top

five

proj

ects


represents the future of De Beers in South Africa and will see the life of the mine being extended into the 2040s. The operation will include two vertical shafts to a depth of approx-imately 1 040 m and shaft sinking – using a new Canadian method which is considered to be safer than traditional South African practice – will start in earnest in the middle of this year. To learn more about the VUP, Modern Mining recently spoke to project manager Kevin Botha.

The gold project in our Top Five feature is the Otjikoto open-pit mine in Namibia, between the towns of Otjiwarongo and Otavi. It is being developed at a cost of US$244 million by Canada’s B2Gold Corporation and is designed to produce up to 141 000 ounces of gold a year in its early years of operation. It is only the second large scale gold mine to be devel-oped in Namibia (the other is Navachab) and is expected to inject near N$4 billion of invest-ment into Namibia’s economy.

Features of the project include the use of leach tanks which were fabricated in Russia – they are ‘unrolled’ on site and quickly erected – and the construction of a fully lined Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) which has involved

a million cubic metres of rockfill being exca-vated, placed and compacted for the starter wall.

Finally, we look at a relatively small – but highly efficient – copper mining project in Katanga in the DRC. The Kipoi mine is owned by Australia’s Tiger Resources and the highly successful Stage I Heavy Media Separation (HMS) operation is currently being replaced by a second stage of development – an SX/EW plant which will have the capacity (in its first phase) to produce 25 000 t/a of copper cathode.

The interesting point about the Stage II proj-ect is that its plant feed will consist initially of material stockpiled on surface, which means that mining can be discontinued for well over two years, resulting in an operation in which mining risk has been eliminated until around mid-2017.

In its latest release on the project, Tiger reports that heap leach commissioning from the agglomerator to the stacker of the SX/EW plant was successfully completed on 27 December 2013. The project is ahead of schedule, with first copper cathode production on target for the second quarter of 2014.

Top five projects


The Trident project was acquired by Toronto- and LSE-listed FQM in 2010 at a time when it was facing grave problems with its DRC prop-erties (the Frontier mine and the

Kolwezi tailings project), which were in es-sence seized by the DRC government, the ulti-mate beneficiary being an international mining

group. This long-running dispute – in which FQM was, in the eyes of most observers, the injured party – was finally settled in 2012 in a settlement which netted the company over a billion dollars.

As Tristan Pascall recalls, one of the posi-tive side effects of FQM’s virtual expulsion from the Congo was that it was able to throw

The approximately US$2 billion Trident project of First Quantum Minerals (FQM) in Zambia’s North-Western Province is on such a scale that it is quite probably the biggest mining development underway anywhere in the Southern African region at present, its only real rival being the Husab uranium project in Namibia (which has a similar price tag). Trident is not just one project but two as it incorporates not only the huge Sentinel open-pit copper mine, which will exploit a vast low-grade resource of dissemi-nated copper, but also the high-grade Enterprise open-pit nickel mine. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently spoke to Tristan Pascall, Deputy General Manager of FQM’s Kalumbila Minerals Limited, about Trident, which will more than double First Quantum’s current Zambian copper production, and also see the company emerge as one of Africa’s biggest nickel miners.

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Trident – First Quantum’s Zambian mega-project

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A recent (October 2013) view of the Sentinel plant site. Sentinel was more than 60 % complete by the end of 2013.Trident – First Quantum’s Zambian mega-project

considerable geological resources at Trident. “We took 30 of our geologists from the DRC and put them to work on Trident, with the result that we probably completed three years’ worth of exploration work in just 12 months, leading to an updated resource for the Sentinel deposit being published in May 2012 and a maiden resource at Enterprise being released in December 2012,” he says. “As a consequence, FQM was able to approve the development of Sentinel in May 2012 and follow up in October with an approval for early works at Enterprise.”

The Trident project was acquired by FQM from Kiwara Resources (founded by well-known mining entrepreneur Colin Bird) but the mineralisation contained with the proj-ect area has been known about for decades, with Anglo American (which was investi-gating the nickel potential) being just one of several operators over the years. Back in the

1970s, when Anglo was active, the area was considered extremely – almost impossibly – remote but this has now changed. As Pascall says, “Trident is only 150 km to the west of our flagship Kansanshi copper mine – which is Africa’s biggest copper producer – and is just 70 km from Barrick’s Lumwana copper mine. In addition, it is accessed by a good sealed road – the T5 – which runs from Solwezi through Mutanda to Mwinilunga, close to the Angolan border. The only major road we’ve had to build is a 30 km access road from the T5 to the Sentinel plant site.”

The resource defined by FQM at Sentinel is based on 514 boreholes totalling 172 692 m and amounts to 1 027 Mt at 0,51 % Cu, with the mineral reserve being 774 Mt at 0,50 % cop-per. The resource at Enterprise has also been well-drilled (359 boreholes for 116 000 m) and consists of 40,1 Mt at the excellent grade

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Above: Rougher flotation section of the plant (photo taken in mid-December 2013).

Top: The stockpile area at Sentinel takes shape.

of 1,07 % Ni, with the mineral reserve being 32,7 Mt at 1,10 % Ni. While Sentinel and Enterprise are the current focus of FQM’s atten-tion, the Trident area also includes the Intrepid base metals target as well as other prospective regional targets. “Kiwara called the project Kalumbila but we changed the name to Trident, as we anticipate that at least three mines, pos-sibly more, will potentially be developed,” says Pascall.

An extractive metallurgist by training (and sometime investment banker), Pascall says that Sentinel will catapult Zambia into the forefront of global copper mining countries in terms of technology. “The point to understand about Sentinel is that while the grade of 0,5 % copper is extremely low, it will nevertheless be a world-class operation producing between 260 000 and 300 000 tonnes of copper a year – which is on a par with the 261 000 tonnes that Kansanshi produced in 2012 (although Kansanshi is aim-ing to increase production capacity to 400 000 tonnes a year),” he says. “To achieve the antici-pated level of production, the mine will have to process 55 Mt/a, which is huge. Nothing like this has been done anywhere before in Zambia – or indeed in Africa. To find similar large scale operations exploiting comparable low-grade deposits, you would have to go to South America. The key, of course, to making Sentinel viable is economies of scale and we anticipate the mine will be a super-efficient operation.”

Among the technologies to be employed at Sentinel – which will have a mine life in excess of 15 years – will be in-pit crushing with three semi-mobile primary crushing systems deliv-ering ore to a crushed ore stockpile providing a live (dry season) capacity of 80 000 tonnes. Two milling trains, each comprising a 28 MW, 40 ft, direct drive SAG mill and a 22 MW, 28 ft, direct drive ball mill, will produce a final grind of 80 % passing 212 micron for flotation. Two banks of rougher-scavenger flotation cells,

each utilising seven cells of 300 m3 capacity, followed by three stages of cleaning per train, will provide a recovery of over 90 % into a concentrate of about 24 % copper. There will also be two flash float cells per train.Tailings will be thickened in 3 by 50 m diameter thick-eners prior to discharge to the TSF (tailings storage facility).

A secondary crushing circuit will be installed to maintain the mill throughput to offset a harder ore in the deeper areas of the pit. This circuit will initially comprise two large cone crushers – Metso MP2500s, which are the largest in the world – with the ability to add more crushers at a later date. The crushers will treat a portion of the ore feeding the stockpile, crushing the top size to below 40 mm. A Metso MP 1250 pebble crusher will also be installed to crush pebbles ejected from the SAG mills down to below 10 mm to minimise critical size build up in the milling circuit.

According to Pascall, the in-pit crushers – the first is already being assembled on site – are a first for Zambia. They are being sup-plied by ThyssenKrupp and each is fitted with a type KB 63-89 gyratory crusher able to han-dle 3 600 t/h of ore. While the units are each

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the size of an eight-storey steel building, they will have to be moved every five years or so and ‘walked’ to a new position. For the relo-cation of individual modules, which weigh up to 1 200 tonnes, ThyssenKrupp is supplying a specially designed transport crawler, only once before built to this size.

The mill trains – which are being supplied by FLSmidth – are equally impressive and are the largest operating SAG/ball mill trains anywhere in the world. They have already been installed, although Sentinel will start up initially on just the one train. Explains Pascall: “We’ll be get-ting our power from our partner, Zesco, in two phases. This is involving the construction of 330 kV transmission lines over a total distance of about 600 km, with the initial link being to Lumwana. This will allow the plant to com-mission on one train in May/June of 2014. The second phase will bring in power via a line from Lusaka West and this should be com-pleted towards year end, allowing the second mill train to start up.”

Out in the single pit (expected to ultimately extend over a distance of 8 km at this stage although the mineralised zone is 12 km long) that will serve the plant, FQM will be deploying some of the biggest mining machines around to handle the large volumes of ore and waste. The mining fleet will include three Caterpillar 7495 rope shovels, each weighing 1 350 t and each equipped with a 57 m3 bucket, and three Komatsu PC5500 excavators fitted with 21 m3 buckets. One of these Komatsu units will be a diesel machine operating in a backhoe con-figuration while the other two will be electric drive units operating in shovel configuration. Komatsu is also supplying the truck fleet which currently consists of 21 x 960Es (ultra class haulers able to take a payload of 327 tonnes) and 15 x 860Es (each offering a payload of 254 tonnes). “The trucks will all be able to take trolley assist, although this won’t be necessary for at least several years,” says Pascall. He adds that much of the mining fleet is already on site and in the process of being assembled. “The final makeup of the truck fleet may be adjusted to suit our startup plans, and those of other operations within FQM.”

While the Sentinel mine will be remark-able for its scale, Enterprise – located 12 km north-west of Sentinel – will be a much smaller operation designed for a plant throughput of only 4 Mt/a. In many respects, Enterprise will be a subsidiary operation of Sentinel, sharing much of Sentinel’s infrastructure, and with its plant co-located with the Sentinel plant. A ded-icated primary crusher, crushed ore stockpile

Cyclone clusters in the mill area.

The mill area looking north-west. Each milling train comprises a 28 MW, 40 ft, direct drive SAG mill and a 22 MW, 28 ft, direct drive ball mill.

and conveying system will be provided for the Enterprise ores; crushed ore will be milled in a SAG and ball milling circuit, and the ground product floated in a circuit comprising talc pre-float, nickel rougher flotation, and two stages of cleaning. The talc pre-float will be oper-ated without reagent addition to produce a talc concentrate containing very little nickel, which will be discarded to final tailings. Final concentrate will be thickened and filtered in a dedicated concentrate handling facility.

Pascall points out that the Sentinel and Enterprise plants are – despite the size dispar-ity – very similar in concept and that copper ores will be treatable in the Enterprise facil-ity, giving FQM great flexibility in terms of the production profile of the two mines. He also notes Enterprise is not as advanced as Sentinel. “Sentinel is already over 60 % complete and will be commissioning in the second half of 2014,” he states. “By contrast, Enterprise is at a much earlier stage and, in fact, does not yet have its environmental permitting in place. We would expect, however, Enterprise

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to commission in 2015, a year to 15 months behind Sentinel. It really depends on the nickel markets and at current prices we envisage that Enterprise will stay on copper for some time.”

The copper concentrate from Sentinel will be treated at Zambian smelters and, primarily, at the new 1,2 Mt/a smelter currently under con-struction by FQM at Kansanshi. This US$690 million facility is on much the same develop-ment timeline as Sentinel. Commissioning is expected to commence in mid-2014 and the smelter should be operating at 80 % of its design capacity by mid-2015 and at a 100 % by early 2016.

In terms of building Sentinel and Enterprise, First Quantum is very much relying on its own in-house resources. “We act as our own EPCM contractor,” Pascall observes. “Overall, we have very few outside contractors on site as we are doing our own civils and structural work, our own piping, and – for the first time – our own electricals. This model works for us, as we’ve shown not only in Zambia but at our other projects around the world, such as the Ravensthorpe nickel mine in Australia and the Kevitsa nickel and copper mine in Finland. We actually have more experience of building mines – at least copper and nickel mines – than many of the big EPCM project houses and our Projects Group is currently responsible for new and ongoing developments worth between US$8 and US$10 billion.”

Two statistics about the Sentinel construction project that give an indication of its scale are the size of the workforce – currently approxi-mately 4 000 people, 3 200 of them Zambian nationals – and the number of truckloads of materials that have had to be transported to site – 14 500 loads totalling 265 000 t of freight. Pascall also points out that apart from the pro-cessing plants and the mining pits, FQM is also building a life of mine TSF, constructing two earthen embankment dams on the Chisola and Musanghezi rivers and building 600 staff houses plus a further 590 houses for families resettled from the project area.

The housing will be part of an entire new town at Kalumbila, which will include clin-ics, schools, a police station and recreational facilities, whose basic design has already been completed by Zambian and international firms. Once Sentinel and Enterprise are up and run-ning, the labour force will consist of roughly 3 000 people (including contractors) and this will provide the ‘anchor’ population. The mines are expected to create at least another 6 000 to 8 000 indirect ‘multiplier’ jobs and FQM estimates that with in-migration the total

population of the town could reach 50 000 within three to five years.

Says Pascall: “We see the new town – which is outside our mining licence area – becoming a development hub in the heart of the ‘New Copperbelt’ and an application has been made to the Zambia Development Agency for it to be granted MFEZ (Multi-Facility Economic Zone) status. Though this tax status would not include mining activities, it will provide incentives to local and international businesses setting up in the area, and will also facilitate increased home ownership as it allows for zero VAT on home purchases.”

Finally, an interesting point about Sentinel is that in many ways it will act as a ‘template’ for First Quantum’s huge Cobre Panama open-pit copper project in Central America, which it acquired in March 2013 in its takeover of Toronto-based Inmet Mining Corporation. Still in the early phase of construction, Cobre Panama – which will be comparable to Sentinel in terms of copper production – was estimated by Inmet to cost US$6,2 billion to develop. FQM, however, which describes the project as being bigger than the Panama Canal in terms of the benefits it confers on the state of Panama, believes it can reduce this figure and also cut the construction period. At the time of FQM’s hostile bid for Inmet, senior executives of the latter company questioned FQM’s abil-ity to achieve any real savings. While a final verdict will have to wait until the completion of Cobre Panama, FQM’s performance thus far on Sentinel suggests that it does indeed have the expertise to deliver large-scale min-ing projects faster and more efficiently than its industry peers.Photos courtesy of First Quantum Minerals

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With the problems of the sand now behind it, Gem is achieving good advance rates in the basalt and expects to start mining the first kimberlite ore in February this year in preparation for the start-up of processing

operations in June, when the first diamonds will be produced. Comments Ian McAdam, Project Director of Gem’s Botswa-nan subsidiary, Gem Diamonds Botswana: “We’ve been very pleased with recent progress at Ghaghoo and the end is now in sight. Developing a mine in the middle of the Kalahari, as we have done, is no easy task and I believe the entire Gem team, as well as our contractors, can feel proud of what has been achieved.”

The reason that the issue of logistics loomed large at the onset of the project is that Ghaghoo is about as remote a site as one can get in Southern Africa. Located approximately 300 km north-west of Gaborone, it is situated inside the sparsely popu-lated 54 000 km2 Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), some 45 km west of the reserve’s eastern boundary. The main access road to the site – all through Kalahari sand – is unsealed and runs from a staging camp established at Lephepe, south-east of

When Gem Diamonds (Gem) embarked upon the development of its new Ghaghoo under-ground mine in the central Kalahari in 2011,

it anticipated that the two biggest challenges it would face would be logistics and the con-struction of a ‘sand tunnel’ – part of a longer

access decline – through 80 m (measured vertically) of Kalahari sand. In the event, the logistics ran surprisingly smoothly while the sand tunnel proved even more problematic

than expected. Nevertheless, it has been suc-cessfully completed and Gem is now continu-

ing to develop the decline through reasonably competent basalt rock and is making excellent

progress, as Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell saw when he recently visited the site.

Gem Diamonds winning in the Kalahari sand

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the project, over a distance of around 160 km and can only be negotiated by multi-traction drive vehicles.

“Despite our initial concerns about logis-tics, our contractor for logistics and camp

Above: The portal of the underground mine.

Left: Night view of the Ghaghoo processing plant showing the DMS and final recovery building.

Below: The concrete-lined ‘sand tunnel’, seen here, was completed in July 2013.

construction, CCB – a locally based company – performed excellently. They established our camp very efficiently and brought in all the heavy loads to site, such as the mill, on time,” says McAdam. “We budgeted for about 20 spe-cial loads, outside of the logistics contract, but at the end of the day none were required.”

Explaining the background to the Ghaghoo mine, McAdam says that the kimberlite to be exploited – GO25 – was discovered by Falconbridge in 1981, following which a joint venture over the project was signed with De

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Above: An ST1530 Scoop-tram operating in the hard rock (basalt) section of the decline.

Top: Panoramic view of the processing plant.

Beers. Exploration during the late 1980s and 1990s included the sinking of a 160 m deep shaft over the centre of the kimberlite and the development of a number of tunnels on the 140 m level. A pre-feasibility was undertaken in the mid-1990s, followed by a feasibility study in 1997/98, which determined that the project was not viable (at least from De Beer’s perspective).

Ten years later and in a different market, Gem Diamonds took a different view of the project, which it acquired in 2007 for US$34 million from De Beers/Xstrata (the latter having pur-chased Falconbridge in 2006). “Gem’s view at this point was that Gope – as the project was then called – could be developed as a large open pit,” says McAdam. “A Bankable Feasibility Study was undertaken which confirmed the viability of this approach, despite the massive amount of pre-stripping that would be required – which would have accounted for a large por-tion of the overall capex requirement. The BFS envisaged a 6 Mt/a operation producing in the region of a million carats a year. Unfortunately, at around this time the global financial cri-sis intervened and the project was put on the backburner for a year or two. During this

period, a new strategy was developed by the project team, which proposed the development of a smaller-scale, fit-for-purpose underground mine at a much reduced capex – which could be internally funded – and with a much faster timeline to production. This proposal received board approval in 2011 and work on the mine started soon thereafter, with the major contract for the decline being awarded mid-year.”

The mine – which is costing US$96 million to develop, less than 20 % of the cost esti-mated for the open pit – will be a 60 000 tonne/month operation producing approximately 220 000 carats a year. The mining method to be used will be sub-level caving, with mining starting in the VKSE facies of the kimberlite, which – at 28,45 cpht – is the highest grade por-tion of the orebody. Eight production levels are planned, extending from the decline, and will be developed 20 m apart.

Probably the biggest single innovation at Ghaghoo has been the method adopted for going through the sand portion of the 6 m diameter decline. “When we went out to tender on this, we envisaged that a tunnelling shield – on the lines of those used to drive some of London’s tube tunnels – would be required and in fact this approach was proposed by our mining consultants, SRK,” McAdam observes. “We invited contractors to submit alternatives and some did – but they all came at a cost pre-mium and the contract was finally awarded to Redpath Mining on the basis of using an Open Face Tunnel Shield (OFTS) to excavate through the Kalahari sand. The shield, at the same time, would be used to install a precast lining, with each ring of the lining being made up of ten segments, with each segment weighing 450 kg.

“Interestingly, the shield was manufactured in an engineering works near Pretoria to a design by a local expert, Ron Ross. No over-seas expertise was required and the machine – which was driven forward by 26 rear-thruster cylinders – worked exceptionally well

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Above: The 100 t/h AG mill at Ghaghoo is only the second in Botswana. The only other mills of this type in Southern Africa are in Angola (photo: Arthur Tassell).

throughout the project. The use of a tunnelling shield on a decline – which dips at 8 deg – is probably a world ‘first’.”

McAdam’s colleague, Kavis Kario, appointed early in 2013 as General Manager of Ghaghoo, says that the total length of the sand portion of the decline (including a transitional zone) is 472 m and that the lining incorporates 763 rings. “The original plan was to install six rings a day, representing a daily advance of 3,6 m,” he states. “In practice, the advance rate was much slower due to a number of factors, including ground conditions that were much more dif-ficult than expected. For example, we had to blast on occasions to get through calcrete, which wasn’t expected – at least on the scale necessary – and we also had to contend with a sinkhole at one point which developed right through to surface. Tragically, we also had two fatalities in a single incident in June 2012 – both employees of Redpath. This was a major blow and resulted in a substantial delay to the project, as we put in place stringent safety protocols in the after-math of the incident that inevitably resulted in a slowing of the advance rate.”

Kario adds that time-consuming hand lashing had to be used throughout the duration of the sand tunnel contract. “We did attempt to use a mini-excavator, but this wasn’t a success,” he says. “I mention this because some people seem to have had the impression that we used a tunnel borer that automatically bored – if that’s the right word – through the sand and removed all the waste. Quite the contrary – a shield is a very different animal and its primary purpose was to provide protection for the workers at the face. Going through the sand was, in fact, a very labour intensive operation.”

The sand tunnel was finally completed in July 2013 and the shield (which is owned by Gem and remains on site) removed, leaving another 560 m of the decline still to be developed through basalt to level 1 at a depth of 154 m, which will be Ghaghoo’s first production level.

“We invited tenders for the hard rock tunnel but, in our view, the prices we received weren’t very competitive and we therefore decided to undertake the work in-house,” says Kario. “As matters stand now – in early December – we’ve completed 480 m of the 560 m.”

Gem’s achievement with the hard rock tunnel is noteworthy given the fact that it has no expe-rience of underground mining (its only current operating mine, Letseng in Lesotho, being an open pit). Comments McAdam: “Karvis, previ-ously with the BCL underground nickel/copper mine in Selebi-Phikwe, has played an invalu-able role in managing the excavation of the decline through the basalt and he has also been instrumental in assembling the team of skilled underground workers required for the work. As opposed to the sand tunnel, the hard rock tunnelling is highly mechanised and is being undertaken using a small fleet of Atlas Copco machines. These include a Boomer 282 twin-boom drill rig, an MT42 Minetruck, which is a 42-t capacity articulated underground truck, and an ST1530 Scooptram 15-t capacity under-ground loader.”

As regards ventilation of the mine, the

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original plan was for a 6 m diameter vent shaft to be blind sunk from surface to a depth of 154 m. Here again, Gem has opted for a low-cost – but just as efficient – alternative. The single vent shaft is being replaced by two large (1,1 m) diameter drill holes that are currently being sunk by Dewet Drilling using its famous ‘Elephant’ rig.

Turning to the surface infrastructure at Ghaghoo, McAdam says the processing plant is (as of early December 2013) 85 % complete. “Construction of the plant has proceeded very smoothly and in fact in April 2013 we sus-pended construction for a few months, as it was well in advance of the underground works, and effectively put it on a care-and-mainte-nance basis after we had taken it up to the C1 commissioning stage,” he says. “The contrac-tor, Consulmet of Johannesburg, has now just restarted work and will take it through the remaining stages of commissioning – C2 to C5 – over the next several months.”

The plant consists of a 100 t/h ore receiving and primary crushing section, an autogenous milling and screening section, a 65 t/h DMS (which produces a -25+1,5 mm concentrate) and a degrit cyclone with final recovery being effected via Flow Sort X-ray machines with the tailings from the X-ray section going to a grease plant. The unusual feature of the processing plant is the autogenous (AG) mill, which is only the second in Botswana (the first is at the new Karowe diamond mine near Orapa).

AG milling, although used successfully in Russia for many years, is not common out-side of that country and in Africa the only other units to be found outside of Botswana are deployed at the Catoca diamond mine in Angola. Explaining the decision to go for an AG mill, McAdam says that the GO25 material is amenable to the process which is expected to have a better liberation capability than a more conventional circuit. Diamond breakage should also be reduced.

Ghaghoo’s 100 t/h AG mill was designed and supplied by Harcliff Mining Services of Johannesburg. It will take 150 mm feed from the primary jaw crusher, grind it to -90 mm and present it to a double-deck screen for siz-ing. The -25+1,5 mm fraction from the bottom deck will report to the DMS feed bin while the -90+25 mm material from the top deck will be stockpiled.

Neither the plant nor the underground operations will be big users of power and the mine’s total electricity demand will be met by an on-site power station consisting of diesel gensets supplying 5 MW. The facility has been

established and is operated by Aggreko. “We are also looking at the possibility of putting in solar power and are already talking to potential suppliers,” says McAdam.

In terms of water supply, Ghaghoo – sur-prisingly, given its Kalahari location – has sufficient water to supply the operations and the camp. Two boreholes tapping into under-ground water sources are easily able to meet the projected demand, with the main consumer being the plant (which will need 74 m3/h once in full operation).

Given its location within a game reserve, Ghaghoo has been designed as a low impact mine. “The current tented camp is a single sta-tus camp, with employees working two weeks on and one week off on a ‘drive-in, drive-out’ basis along the lines of the Australian model,” says McAdam. “An airstrip, which should be up and running by the time the mine enters production, is being planned and at a later stage consideration may be given to moving to a ‘fly-in, fly-out’ arrangement. The key point is that we want to have as few people on site as possible.” He adds that the mine will employ about 200 people once in production, including contractors handling functions such as security, logistics and camp management.

Concluding, McAdam says that the Ghaghoo project offers considerable scope for expansion. “The total resource we have to a depth of 524 m is estimated at approximately 20 million car-ats so clearly there is potential to increase the production rate,” notes McAdam. “The current mine is very much a phase one operation which will enable us to confirm diamond grade, prove mining methods and trial processing innova-tions such as the use of an AG mill. At this stage, however, it is obviously too early to say what form future expansion will take. These options will all be studied at the appropriate time, based on what we learn from the initial operation of the mine and, of course, market conditions.”

Photos by Charles Corbett on behalf of Gem Diamonds (un-less otherwise acknowledged)

Power is being supplied by this 5 MW on-site power sta-tion (photo: Arthur Tassell).


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Based in SA’s northern-most Lim-popo Province, Venetia combines an enviable resource base with in-novative technologies to set itself up as a pillar of De Beers Consoli-

dated Mines (DBCM) – the South African min-ing arm of the De Beers Group of Companies – for the next three decades.

The open-pit production continues until 2021 when underground production is planned to start. The Venetia Underground Project (VUP) plans to mine the two main orebodies (K01 and K02) below the current open-pit cut (Cut 4). Venetia will continue with the current throughput levels of almost 6 Mt/a, treat-ing 130 million tonnes of ore and producing

96 million carats (a resource base that is 77 % indicated and 23 % inferred); this gives a grade that averages 135 carats per 100 tonnes and it is well accepted that there is scope for economic mining below currently defined levels.

Developing the underground operation will include a number of technological inno-vations that are likely to garner substantial interest beyond the sheer scale of the project. According to project manager Kevin Botha, the shaft-sinking process will be an early devia-tion from traditional practices. Deriving from Canada and implemented locally by Murray & Roberts Cementation, the method is (in line with the corporate policy) expected to be sub-stantially safer, if a little slower.

“Shaft-sinking projects are notoriously dan-gerous, mainly as a result of the confined spaces and the proximity of machinery and people,” said Botha. “This technology avoids that by utilising a clamshell mucker operated from the lower portion of the stage in a remote con-trolled manner. We drop the kibble down and place it, then use the mucker to load the shaft bottom and also to move the kibble around. This way, there will be no people on the shaft bottom during post-blast loading.”

Typical shaft sinking may also require

New life underground at De Beers’ Venetia MineFirst opened some 20 years ago to become South Africa’s

largest diamond producer, De Beers’ Venetia Mine contin-ues to be a leading light on the road forward for the coun-

try’s mining sector. Its owners have committed a record capital investment of R20 billion to be spent over the period up to 2024 in building an underground operation to replace the open pit and push out the mine’s life into the 2040s. The current mining licence expires in 2038 before which Venetia

Mine will apply to extend its mining rights.

The Venetia Underground Project (VUP) operates as an integrated single owner and non-owner team with De Beers and WorleyParsons South Africa and specialist personnel from other com-panies managing the project. In a technical session are (facing the camera, from left to right): Stelios Achilleoudes, Owners Team Civil and Structural Engineer; David Whitehouse, Engineer-ing Manager VUP; Pieter Fick, Lead Electrical Engineer; Kevin Botha, Head of the VUP; and (standing) Brendan Sinclair, Lead Civil and Structural Engineer. Seated in the left foreground (and facing away from the camera) is Ryan Illingworth, Area Manager, Shafts and Mining.

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New life underground at De Beers’ Venetia Mine

Above: Preparing the site for the first blast in September 2013 where the production shaft for the VUP will be situated.

Left: Operations at the massive Venetia Mine open pit, a global Tier 1 diamond mine, will continue to 2021 when ore from the new underground operation is scheduled to begin to report to the treatment plant.

hand-held drilling at the base of the shaft, he said, but the method to be used here involves drilling all the holes from an automated drilling platform. This new method also circumvents concurrent activities, requiring that the sink-ing and lining phase is completed before the equipping of the shaft commences, rather than performing these functions simultaneously.

“Traditionally, you would have five or six dif-ferent activities in the shaft at the same time, and this can become and is dangerous,” said Botha. “Even though the process will take a little longer, we will be pursuing this method as safety is the primary factor in any of our operations and supports our strategy leg of ‘Permission to Operate’ which includes safe

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First blast and ‘lift off’ for the VUP in September 2013.

Left: A striking view of the Venetia plant. Throughput at the facility is planned to remain at 5,9 Mt/a.

operations. At the forefront of all our deci-sions is the need to keep our people safe, as opposed to pushing production or prioritising time-saving.”

He added, however, that there were measures in place to mitigate any unnecessary delays, including the presence of Canadian managers and operators from the Non Owner Participants and their shaft-sinking teams.

The muckers will be brought in from Canada, and local operators will soon begin their train-ing on this equipment. Pre-sinking starts in about October 2014 and will continue through to February 2015; then follows a four to five month hiatus in shaft sinking while the wind-ers and stages are put in place. Shaft sinking begins in earnest in about June 2015.

The operation will include two vertical shafts – a production shaft and a service shaft – to a depth of approximately 1 040 m. The K01 ore-body, currently mined to a level of 330 m below surface, will be mined by the opencast operation to 450 m below surface before being accessed from below by the underground mine. The K02 orebody is currently 250 m below surface and will be mined down to 350 m below surface.

Once underground mining begins, De Beers may plough back its mine automation expe-rience from mines such as Koffiefontein, Wesselton and Finsch (all of which it previ-ously owned).

“We’re starting to look at options including the concept of the fully automated mine,” said Botha. “This will be the focus of a study we’ll start in 2014, and which will explore options in both loading and hauling over the next couple of years.”

Fully automated hauling is a field in which De Beers has made considerable progress, and its experience from when it operated Finsch

Mine in particular could be well utilised under-ground at Venetia. Loading is another matter, although Botha is hopeful that technology will soon advance and open doors in the near future.

“The technology to support fully automated loading is not quite there yet, but it can be developed,” he said. “For now, it is feasible to do remote loading – where a person can sit in a control room on surface and operate the loading function. The important thing is that we prioritise safety, and the technical solutions will flow from that.”

De Beers’ global policy is to embed a pro-active working culture of ‘zero harm’ across all its operations, emphasising that everyone has responsibility for safety.

Botha emphasised the role of ‘Non Owner Participants’ (a term he prefers to ‘contrac-tors’ – which he suggested has come to embody some negative connotations), who bring a range of vital and specialised skills to the project.

“Without these companies, we simply can’t accomplish what we need to do, so the way we view each other and our common objective must recognise this fact,” he said.

On this front, the key participant is Murray &

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Cluster of treasuresOnly two (K01 and K02) of the twelve known kimberlites that form the Venetia cluster – made up of 11 pipes and one dyke system – are currently being mined. Some of the pipes were formed in multiple intrusive events, resulting in a variety of kimberlite types being encountered during mining operations. The kimberlites are clustered over about 3 km2, while the total surface area of the kimberlites themselves is 28 ha.

In a previous interview with Modern Mining, De Beers Consolidated Mines CEO Phillip Barton was emphatic about Venetia’s resources and fu-ture potential. “It’s a fantastic orebody and the grades continue at depth,” Barton said. “Venetia is very special. In global terms, it’s a Tier 1 mine with a high-grade orebody that extends to depth.”

Work-in-progress draw-ing of the proposed layout of the underground mine which will be beneath the current open-pit operation at Venetia Mine.

Roberts Cementation, taking on the lion’s share of work by tackling the shaft sinking, decline development, lateral development and infra-structure development around both orebodies.

Through a natural transition, De Beers teams will start taking over the lateral development, said Botha. “We’ll work on the principle that first they will ‘do’ and we will watch, then we will do and they will watch, and then we will just carry on doing,” he said. “We will prob-ably need their special skills again when doing massive excavations, but otherwise the mining process will become our core business.”

This makes for an interesting change of tack for mining in the northern part of Limpopo Province, historically more at home with open-cast mining than underground. While the mine aims to continue employing its staff from the surrounding areas, there will be a need to re-orientate the skills base to accommodate the new demands of mining at depth. In the eight years leading up to steady state production lev-els, the mine will be training people from the employment feed area to create and develop the skills base from the areas in which it operates.

“The underground working environment will be the future for Venetia,” Botha said. “It will have to become the new culture of min-ing in Limpopo, as there are future prospects at Venetia even below our current mining prospects.”

Venetia was among the first mining opera-tions to employ women in the role of dump truck drivers. Now it will be looking to adapt those skills for underground, while maintain-ing its equitable employment practices.

Basil Read is working on the terracing and civil works in preparation for sinking, while Conco is installing the new power supply infrastructure in the form of two sub-stations – one at the existing Eskom yard and the other

on site – joined by a 22 kVA overhead line. WorleyParsonsTWP (now WorleyParsons South Africa) will handle the engineering portion of the project.

On the processing side, not much will change. Throughput at the treatment and recovery plant – where kimberlite is crushed, washed and screened into different size frac-tions – is planned to remain at 5,9 Mt/a. The process includes dense-medium separation to produce a diamondiferous concentrate, which is then subject to X-ray fluorescence sorting to separate diamonds from residual waste.

After drying, final hand-sorting recovers the diamonds, which are sent to De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa in Kimberley for classification into some 5 000 categories based on combinations of size, shape, colour and quality.

“Nearer the time, we’ll be doing testing of our underground ore to confirm its characteristics for treatment,” said Botha.

The environmental sensitivity of the area around the mine has always been a priority, leading De Beers to spend some R17 million on initial studies and projects to minimise impact.


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The 35 km water supply pipeline and other service supply pipe-lines are mostly buried, and the mine itself employs a modern dust control system as well as strategies to reduce noise and light pollution.

The archaeological and ecological heritage has also been well researched and conserved, with the company establishing the 36 000 ha Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve adjacent to the mine.

Going underground will further reduce the mine’s environmen-tal impact, said Botha; among other things, there will no longer be mining of waste rock and emissions will be much reduced.

But while Venetia’s workings may be less visible after 2021, its economic impact will remain an unseen engine driving the poten-tial prosperity of Limpopo Province and beyond.Report by Paul Crankshaw, photos courtesy of De Beers

Earthworks in progress for the decline portal at the VUP site (photo taken in December 2013).

Social impact of the VUPAs an expansion of the Venetia Mine, the underground project is aligned with the existing social and labour plan, as required by its mining licence; management continues as a practice to consult directly with local stakeholders – in particular in Alldays and Musina – about creating opportunities for local enterprise on the future requirements of underground operations and associated development.

“As we have done in the past, we would like to source as much as possible of our skills and service requirements from the local areas,” said Botha. “So we are continuing to work in terms of our strong social and labour plan currently in existence on Venetia Mine, and each of our Non Owner Participants has a role to play.

“Looking ahead to 2021 when the underground operations begin, we have started talking to local partners about what kind of oppor-tunities can and will arise from our business needs at that point – and how they could contribute towards preparing local people to become Non Owner Participants in this exciting development and the ongoing operations of the mine between 2021 and 2043. From our side, this will involve plenty of coaching and mentoring, but this is not new to us and we will happily continue providing this.”

It is estimated that, between 2021 and 2039, the underground operation will support approximately 6 625 jobs each year: 1 482 employees in the underground operation itself and a further 5 143 people elsewhere in the South African economy. This translates to a knock-on effect of 3,5 jobs created for every direct employee.

The ownership element of De Beers Consolidated Mines’ BEE sta-tus is a 26 % shareholding owned by Ponahalo Holdings.

Top five projects


GOLD

Otjikoto, located 300 km north of Windhoek and 70 km north of the town of Otjiwarongo, is a very significant development for Namibia, as it will inject nearly N$4 billion of investment into the country’s economy over its presently envisaged

life of 12 years, at the same time adding welcome diversity to Namibia’s mining industry, which is currently largely based on the mining of diamonds, uranium and zinc. It is also one of only three large-scale mining projects currently under con-struction in the country, the others being the massive Chinese-owned Husab uranium project near Swakopmund, represent-ing an investment of close to US$2 billion, and Weatherly’s much smaller Tschudi heap-leach copper project in the north of the country.

Although B2Gold did not discover the gold mineralisation at Otjikoto – the credit for this goes to Anglovaal Mining which was exploring in the area in the late 1990s for base metals – it can certainly claim to have moved the project ahead with a determination not displayed by most of its predecessors on site. Says Lytle: “We only acquired Otjikoto in late 2011 and yet we’ll be in production by late 2014, which I think is an incredible achievement. When we first started engaging with the Namibian government on Otjikoto we sensed they were

B2Gold Namibia, the Namibian subsidiary of Vancouver-based gold miner B2Gold Corp,

is moving fast on the construction of its new US$244 million Otjikoto Mine, which is on schedule to pour its first gold in the fourth

quarter of 2014. Once operational, Otjikoto will become the flagship of Namibia’s gold mining industry as its annual gold produc-

tion – up to 141 000 ounces a year in the early years of operation – will be nearly twice that of AngloGold Ashanti’s Navachab, currently

the sole gold producer in the country. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently visited the

Otjikoto site in the company of Bill Lytle, MD of B2Gold Namibia, and Charles Loots, the com-pany’s General Manager – Corporate, to view

progress on the project.

Otjikoto on course to commission in late 2014


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disappointed with the slow pace of devel-opment on the project. We set out to change that perception and we’ve done exactly that. The Namibian Minister of Mines & Energy, Isak Katali, was the guest of honour at our ground-breaking ceremony held in April this year (2013) and he was clearly impressed with the manner in which we’ve fast-tracked the

Above: B2Gold Namibia’s Liebherr 9250 excavator loads a Cat 777D dump truck (photo: Arthur Tassell).

Above left: The ‘first blast’ at the Otjiikoto Mine in July 2013.

Below and left: A leach tank being erected with a second ‘rolled up’ unit being lifted in the background.

project and he complimented B2Gold on keep-ing to its promises.”

According to Lytle, the speed at which the project is progressing owes much to the fact that B2Gold carries out its own development. “We’re one of only a small number of mining companies that build their own mines,” he says. “Whereas most companies will employ

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Pictured here (from left) are Gerson Shipena, Min-ing Manager, Bill Lytle, MD of B2Gold Namibia, and Charles Loots, GM – Corporate, B2Gold Namibia (photo: Arthur Tassell).

an EPCM contractor, we perform this func-tion ourselves and not only do we manage the construction but we also execute all the earthworks, civil, structural, mechanical and electrical work directly using our own in-house resources. We believe we can do things better and faster than contractors and we’ve proven this on several projects.”

Lytle mentions that the feasibility study on Otjikoto was carried out by a team led by DRA Mineral Projects of Johannesburg. Detailed engineering of the plant was carried out by Lycopodium of Australia.

A US citizen who has a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an MSc in Civil Engineering, Lytle is an experienced mine builder who has worked not only on all of B2Gold’s projects but also those of its predecessor, Bema Gold, including the Julietta and Kupol projects, both developed in remote parts of Russia. Otjikoto is his first African project but it may well not be his last, as B2Gold is in the process of acquiring fellow TSX-listed Volta Resources, which has an 81 % interest in the Kiaka gold project in Burkina Faso. This is an advanced stage gold project with a 4,86 million ounce gold resource – enough to sustain a production rate of 340 000 ounces of gold over a 10-year mine life.

When Otjikoto comes on line it will increase

B2Gold’s production significantly. The com-pany currently has three operating mines – La Libertad and Limon in Nicaragua and Masbate in the Philippines – which are projected to produce between 360 000 and 380 000 ounces in 2013. The addition of Otjikoto will take this figure to an estimated 555 000 ounces in 2015. B2Gold’s aim is to get to 750 000 ounces a year by 2018, although this will depend on it get-ting the Gramalote project in Colombia – a JV with AngloGold Ashanti – into production. If this target is reached, B2Gold, currently seen as a mid-tier miner, will border on having major status.

Otjikoto – which is 90 % owned by B2Gold with the balance being held by EVI Mining, a Namibian empowerment group – is being developed as a conventional open-pit mine and will produce 1,28 Moz of gold over its 12-year life. Average annual production for years one to five will be 141 000 ounces a year at an operat-ing cash cost of US$524/ounce while average annual production over the LOM is projected at 112 000 ounces at a cash cost of US$689/ounce. Total ore to be produced over the LOM is 29,4 Mt at a grade of 1,42 g/t while total waste will amount to 164,3 Mt, giving a strip-ping ratio of waste to ore of 5,59.

It is envisaged that the single pit being mined will ultimately be 2 km long by 0,6 km wide by 250 m deep. B2Gold is undertaking the mining in-house and has already assembled a consider-able mining fleet on site, which includes a giant 250-t Liebherr R9250 excavator for bulk waste and a Liebherr R984 excavator for the mining of ore. Ultimately, the fleet will consist of one R9250 and two R984s. The trucking fleet com-prises 100-t capacity Cat 777s, with six already on site although eventually (by 2015) 15 will be needed. Sandvik has supplied the drill rigs – two D25KS blasthole rigs and a Pantera DP1500 tophammer rig.

B2Gold Namibia’s Mining Manager is Gerson Shipena, who was previously with AngloGold Ashanti Namibia at its Navachab gold mine. “We started stripping in May and are now

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about 8 m down in Pushback 1 – essentially we’ve removed most of the calcrete overly-ing the orebody,” he says. “The total material moved so far amounts to approximately 3,6 Mt and we will soon be mining ore, which will be stockpiled in advance of the plant becoming operational.”

In terms of processing, Otjikoto will be a rela-tively conventional operation and is based on a whole ore leach flowsheet at a nominal treat-ment rate of 2,5 Mt/a and a 25 % design factor on the crusher, conveyors, mills, pumps and thickeners to allow for expansion to 3 Mt/a with minimal additional capex. The plant is designed to be able to treat the three main ore types at Otjikoto, designated as XR1 (oxide), XR2 (pyrite dominant) and XR3 (pyrrhotite dominant).

Run-of-mine ore from the open pit will be fed to a 440 t/h crushing plant which consists of a gyratory crusher and conveyor system that feeds the crushed ore stockpile. Material will be reclaimed from the stockpile – which has 24 hours live capacity – and treated in a grinding circuit consisting of a primary 24 ft by 15,75 ft SAG mill and a secondary 16,5 ft by 28,5 ft ball mill. The entire ball mill discharge stream will be treated in a gravity concentra-tion circuit for recovery of coarse gold and the gravity concentrate will be processed in an intensive leach circuit.

The gravity tailings product is thickened to 45 % solids and treated in a cyanide leach cir-cuit. The leach product stream flows by gravity to a carbon in pulp (CIP) circuit for recovery of gold in solution. The tailings stream from the CIP circuit is treated in a cyanide destruction circuit using the SO

2/air process, before being pumped to a lined tailings facility.

Gold is recovered from the CIP circuit loaded carbon in a split AARL elution circuit. Gold solutions from the gravity intensive leach circuit and elution circuit are treated in an electrowinning process followed by smelting to produce doré bars. Final recoveries of gold are projected at 95,6 %.

The primary crusher and the mills are being

supplied by Metso. The crusher is a Superior® 42-65 MK-II unit while both grinding mills have 4 MW motors. The crusher is due for delivery in January (2014) while the mills should be on site by April. On the gravity circuit, the equip-ment is being sourced from FLSmidth Knelson, which is supplying four KC-QS48 concentrators and a ConSep Acacia CS8000 intense cyanida-tion reactor.

When Modern Mining was on site, construc-tion of the plant was at an early stage, with steel erection still to start. The first of the eight leach tanks, however, had been erected using a Russian system that Modern Mining has cer-tainly never seen before and which is very likely a ‘first’ for Southern Africa. “The tanks are built in Russia, rolled up and then shipped as single units to Walvis Bay,” Lytle explains. “Once on site, we simply stand them up on their foundations and weld them shut. This is a technology that B2Gold first came across when we worked in Russia and it is hardly known in the West. The cost benefits are fairly marginal once you factor in shipping costs but the pro-cess is much faster than conventional methods – and there are also safety benefits as work on site is minimised. Four of the tanks are already on site with the balance expected shortly.”

Apart from the pit and the plant, the other

Above: Mining operations underway in the Otjikoto pit.

Top: The Otjiokoto site showing tank founda-tions in the foreground. Workshops and (on the right) leach tanks awaiting assembly can be seen in the background.

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major element of Otjikoto is the Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) – designed by Epoch Resources of South Africa – which is now well advanced and which, unusually, will be a fully lined facility. “We’re constructing the TSF to international best practice,” says Lytle. “We’ve gone for a traditional South African paddock design with a penstock and toe drains to mini-mise evaporative losses with an under drain/leakage system installed as well. The liner we’re using is a 1,5 mm thick HDPE product that we’ve imported from Canada and which will cover 140 hectares. It is being installed by Aquatan.

“The TSF is an exceptionally big facility and has involved a million cubic metres of rockfill being excavated, placed and compacted for the starter wall, which will have a maximum height of 13 m. The tailings surface will rise 30 m above the starter wall. The solids deposi-tion rate will be the same as the mill feed rate (2,5 Mt/a).” Lytle notes that use of a cyanide destruction process will keep expected CN lev-els low and says that B2Gold is also expecting to achieve an overall high level of water recy-cling of around 60 %.

In terms of water and electricity supply, Otjikoto will be largely self-sufficient. Water is derived from boreholes – the site virtually sits on top of an aquifer – and B2Gold has recently been granted its operational water abstrac-tion permit allowing it to extract 1,4 Mm3 per annum. As regards power, capacity restraints on the part of Namibia’s electricity utility, Nampower, mean that B2Gold will install its own on-site 23 MW generating plant based primarily on HFO gensets, which it expects to be operational by October 2014. The com-pany is also looking at the possibility of using solar power in the future and is planning a

feasibility study to examine the costs and benefits.

While B2Gold is making excellent progress on the mine and its associated infrastructure, it has also not been idle in implementing a very com-prehensive and generously funded Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, with the budget allocated for 2013 alone amounting to N$3,4 million. According to Charles Loots, CSR is a vital element of every mine project that B2Gold undertakes, with Otjikoto being no exception. “Our goal is to develop projects that make a meaningful contribution to the communities on which we impact and which are sustainable even after mine closure,” he says. “The key areas we’re targeting are educa-tion, public health, development of SMEs and environmental conservation. We’re not simply imposing our programmes on the community that surrounds Otjikoto but instead rely on a transparent, highly participative process to identify suitable projects and initiatives.”

Loots points out that a major portion of the 18 000 ha Otjikoto mining licence area will be developed as a conservation area and indeed Modern Mining on its recent visit was able to view the strides that have already been made – including a handsome new thatched educa-tion centre, built around what was previously a hunting lodge, as well as a treehouse for game viewing. While there is wildlife already on the property, reintroductions of certain spe-cies have started and extensive bush clearing has been undertaken on parts of the property heavily degraded by poor land management. An experienced full-time manager for the con-servation area has also been appointed.

The Otjikoto Mine, of course, will also pro-vide direct benefits to the local community in the form of employment opportunities

The thatched education cen-tre at the Otjikoto property has been built around what was previously a hunting lodge.


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asso ciated with either the construction or per-manent operations. The workforce on site (as of late November 2013) numbered 439 with this being expected to peak at 720 in March 2014. Once in full production, B2Gold Namibia will employ 482 people on present esti-mates, 425 of them at the Otjikoto Mine. Says Loots: “We have a strict policy of maximising local employment, with our goal being to hire locally to the great-est extent possible, with preference being given to previously disadvantaged Namibian citizens. In terms of higher level appointments, we will only turn to expatriates if we cannot identify the skills we need within Namibia.”

All employees will live off site and B2Gold Namibia is currently working on an assisted home ownership scheme. It has already had fruitful discussions with the Otavi municipality on land provision and will also engage with the Otjiwarongo municipality. Otavi is located 40 km north of the Otjikoto site.

Finally, an interesting question to ask is whether there is potential for Otjikoto to continue operating beyond the cur-rent 12-year LOM. “Most definitely,” Lytle responds. “We have a very aggres-sive exploration programme – we spent US$7,5 million in 2012 and will have spent another US$7 million in 2013 by year-end – and the results are very encouraging. In particular, we’re very excited by the potential of the Wolfshag zone, located immediately to the east and north-east of the current pit. Our 2013 drilling programme at Wolfshag totalled 23 600 m and the majority of assay results have now been returned. They indicate high-grade gold over significant thick-nesses and include intersections of up 15,0 g/t gold over 19,8 m. So, to answer your question, we do believe there is significant potential to extend the mine life at Otjikoto. Certainly, within B2Gold

we are very optimistic that the present planned operation at Otjikoto will be just the start of a long-term engagement with Namibia.”Photos by B2Gold Namibia (unless otherwise acknowledged)

Part of the construction camp located about 2 km north-east of the mine (photo: Arthur Tassell)

Top five projects


COPPER

Located just an hour’s drive from Lubumbashi, capital of Katanga Province, on the road to Likasi, Kipoi is not a particularly big proj-ect in terms of copper production

– compared, for example, to First Quantum’s new Sentinel mine (see page 30) now under construction south of the border in Zambia – but it is also not insubstantial. Copper produc-tion for calendar year (CY) 2013 is expected to be just over 40 000 tonnes of copper in con-centrate while in CY 2014, the HMS plant is forecast to produce 39 000 tonnes of copper in concentrate at the almost unbelievably low cash operating cost of US$0,38/lb. The opera-tion of the HMS will overlap for a period with the start-up of the Stage 2 plant, which in its first 12 full months of production is expected

Kipoi – a nearly perfect copper-mining project

Anyone watching the progress of Tiger Resources’ Kipoi copper project in the DRC over the past several years cannot fail to have been impressed by the exemplary manner in which the project has been implemented. Kipoi’s Stage 1 Heavy Media Separation (HMS) plant is now consistently – over seven quarters in a row as of this writing – running well above its nameplate capac-ity, cash costs are just US$0,48/lb (for the September quarter) and the safety performance on site is unblemished. In addition, ASX-listed Tiger is well ad-vanced on Kipoi’s Stage 2 solvent extraction/electrowinning (SX/EW) plant and is expecting to deliver it ahead of schedule in Q2 2014. Modern Min-ing’s Arthur Tassell recently spoke to Tiger’s MD, Brad Marwood (right), to find out why the company has been so successful at Kipoi.

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to produce 25 000 tonnes of copper cathode.The Stage 2 plant is a three-phase project,

with phase 1 (which is costing US$161 million) designed for 25 000 t/a of copper cathode and phase 2, scheduled to come on line in Q2 2015, doubling this capacity to 50 000 t/a. Phase 3 will add a 1 Mt/a tank leach circuit and will – on present plans – be commissioned in 2016. Site cash operating costs are predicted to be US$0,72/lb in 2014/2015, rising to US$1,13/lb averaged out over the nine-year life of mine of Stage 2. Currently, Tiger is the ASX’s lowest cost copper producer and one of the lowest on a worldwide basis.

The Kipoi mining licence covers an area of

Above: The Kipoi pit. Present plans are for mining operations at Kipoi to stop by the middle of 2014 with mining only restarting in 2017.

Below: The HMS plant. It has now delivered seven consecutive quarters of pro-duction at above nameplate capacity.

Kipoi – a nearly perfect copper-mining project

55 km2 and contains a 12 km-long sequence of mineralised Roan sediments that host at least five known deposits: Kipoi Central, Kipoi North, Kileba, Judeira and Kaminafitwe. Although the mineralisation at the site was known about prior to Tiger acquiring the proj-ect, there is no history of any commercial-scale mining at the site and Gecamines, the state cop-per miner which held the deposit at one point (it still retains a 40 % interest), seems to have done only limited exploration, estimating a non-JORC compliant resource of 200 000 t of contained copper for part of the project area.

Tiger can lay claim to having recognised the huge potential of the property and for

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The electrowinning (EW) facility at Kipoi under con-struction.

putting together a strategy to develop it. Says Marwood: “If you look at what we’ve accom-plished in roughly seven years, it’s impressive. After acquiring an interest in the project in 2006, we started drilling in 2007 and by 2008 we had discovered resources representing in excess of US$5 billion of contained copper. By 2009 we had completed a feasibility study on the Stage 1 HMS development and secured the necessary funding and we were able to start construction in mid-2010, with commissioning being completed in April 2011. By February 2012 we had repaid all debt and the project has been a revenue centre since then. Earlier this year we announced the results of our Definitive Feasibility Study on Stage 2 and a few days later we started construction of the SX/EW.”

Of course, Tiger’s achievement owes much to the remarkable quality of the Kipoi Central deposit (the only one to be mined thus far) which has a high-grade core of 7 % copper sit-ting inside a total resource of nearly 800 000 tonnes. As Marwood says, “Kipoi Central is a fantastic deposit and it’s one the reasons one comes to the DRC – copper grades in Katanga are generally between 2,5 and 5 % and are amongst the world’s highest.”

A good deposit in itself though is not enough to assure success and Marwood also points to the vast experience residing within Tiger Resources as another key reason for the com-pany’s success. “My COO, Charles Brown, and the operations team must have a collective 500 years of experience of mining in Africa and there’s no doubt that this has contributed to the outstanding performance on site,” he says. “I should also mention our Finance Director, Stephen Hills. He’s done outstanding work in putting together the US$80 million finance

package for the Stage 2 project, with the aver-age interest cost on borrowings being less than 5,5 %. To be able to raise money in the pres-ent mining investment climate is not easy but we’ve succeeded at a time when most of our peers have failed.”

Marwood himself, incidentally, is an old ‘Africa hand’ and in a previous phase of his career managed Normandy Mining’s portfolio of African projects, which, at its peak, numbered over 100 projects in 24 countries, including Ghana, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Sudan. He is based in Perth – where Tiger maintains a very ‘lean’ head office staffed by just eight people – but visits Kipoi five or six times a year. A mining engineer by training, he has been Tiger’s MD since 2010. He is a great believer in the potential of the DRC, pointing out that the country’s copper production has grown from 400 000 t/a when Tiger commissioned the HMS plant to around 750 000 tonnes at present. He also notes that the DRC’s economy is currently growing at plus 10 % a year (albeit from a low base), one of the fastest rates in the world.

According to Marwood, another factor that has helped Tiger is the excellent infrastructure Kipoi enjoys. “We have a power line 800 m behind the plant, a good supply of water within 6 km of site, excellent telecommunications, a sealed road just 5 km from site that links right through to Dar es Salaam and to South Africa, and a railway line that actually traverses our property – it runs between the pit and plant and goes all the way to the Angolan ports,” he says. He adds that on top of these advantages, there is a plentiful supply of skilled mining people in Katanga, the result of a more than 100-year history of mining in the province.

Referring to the HMS operation at Kipoi,

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The solvent extraction (SX) facility at an advanced stage of construction.

Marwood says it has been a spectacular suc-cess and allowed Tiger to get into production at relatively low cost (the capex involved was US$30 million). “The plant was designed to process 900 000 t/a of 7 % copper ore over a three-year period to produce the equivalent of 35 000 t/a of copper but in fact we are doing much better than this,” he says. “By the time the plant closes down next year (2014), it will have produced a total of 132 000 tonnes of cop-per in concentrate over a 42-month life from 3,5 Mt of ore.”

The plant was designed and built by DRA, which delivered it on time and within budget. “DRA provided us with a fit-for-purpose facility but we’ve been able to improve on its design capacity by a series of low-cost improvements. These have included increasing the width of conveyor belts from 650 mm to 750 mm, which effectively doubles their capacity, reducing the consumption of ferrosilicon by improving the quality of water to the plant, installing bigger pumps, reducing screen sizes and changing the configuration of the cyclone tower. These improvements have all reflected the experience and competence of our team on site,” states Marwood.

Notwithstanding the success of Stage 1, the Stage 2 expansion of Kipoi represents Tiger’s future in the DRC. “The economics of the Stage 2 operation are very robust with the payback period being estimated at just 16 months,” explains Marwood. “One of the key things to understand is that the SX/EW plant will ini-tially process material stockpiled on surface – HMS rejects and low, medium and high-grade ore stockpiles – and that we won’t have to mine for well over two years. Currently, this surface material contains copper with a metal value of over US$800 million based on pres-ent LME copper prices but this figure will grow to a billion dollars or more by mid-2014. The

interesting point here is that during this period all the resource risk at Kipoi is removed and it becomes purely an industrial risk operation.”

Present plans are for the mining contractor, Lubumbashi-based MCK Mining, to cease oper-ations by the middle of 2014. “We will restart the mining operation in mid-2017, although pre-stripping activities will start somewhat earlier in late 2016,” Marwood says. “Kipoi Central will continue to form the backbone of the mining operation, with its ore being sup-plemented by our other deposits. At this stage, we envisage mining starting at Kileba in 2018 and Kipoi North in 2020, with Judeira and Kaminafitwe coming in later. The mining will also be on a larger scale than at present. MCK currently uses articulated dump trucks and 80-t excavators but we envisage that Stage 2 min-ing will require 100-t rigid trucks working with 140-t excavators, as the material to be moved yearly will double from 10 Mt to 20 Mt.”

The SX/EW facility is of conventional design. Plant feed will be crushed and washed to sepa-rate the +0,3 mm fraction from the slimes and the fines. The +0,3 mm fraction will be sent to heap leach pads where recoveries are antici-pated to be 83 % of contained copper while the slimes and fines will be directly fed to a tank leach system (to be built in phase 3) where the anticipated recoveries will range from 88 % to 90 %. This split processing system allows flex-ibility in the process pathway offering options for high, medium and low grade ores.

The task of building the SX/EW plant has been entrusted to SENET of Johannesburg, which is working under a lump-sum turnkey (LSTK) contract. According to Marwood, the company was selected because of its exten-sive experience of heap leach, SX/EW projects, including some in the DRC. He says that thus far Tiger is well pleased with SENET’s perfor-mance, with the work being on schedule and


COPPER

within budget. “As at the end of October, the project was 74 % complete, which is quite an achievement when you consider that work only started in January 2013,” he observes. “In addi-tion, there have been no LTIs. In fact, we’ve now notched up 3,3 million injury-free hours at Kipoi, including the mining operation, the HMS plant and the SX/EW expansion. We’re very proud of this safety record – which owes much, incidentally, to our implementation of NOSA’s Five Star safety system.”

While the Stage 2 expansion has a mine life of nine years, Marwood stresses there is significant potential for this to be extended. “Our explora-tion is continuing on the deposits forming the Kipoi project, and we’re also working hard on the 140 km2 Luputo prospecting licence (10 km south of Kipoi) where indicated and inferred resources of 168 000 tonnes of copper have already been delineated,” he says. “Another asset we have is the 27 km2 La Patience per-mit, 10 km south-east of Kipoi, which was acquired by Tiger in January 2013 and which hosts a prominent copper anomaly (as well as a zinc anomaly). Clearly, there is every prospect that we will be able to increase the resources

The ILS (intermediate leach solution) pond showing the HDPE (high density polyeth-ylene) liner.

available to the SX/EW plant and that Tiger will continue to be active as a producer in the DRC beyond the nine years currently envisaged for Stage 2 operations.”Photos courtesy of Tiger Resources

Editor’s note: Tiger Resources announced in late December that the irrigation of stacked ore with sulphuric acid had begun at Kipoi, marking the start of heap leach operations. To

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PRODUCT News

Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa will provide a contain-erised water treatment plant – built into six 40-foot shipping containers – to the Kansanshi copper mine near Solwezi in Zambia. As part of a new copper smelter project, the mine aims to grow its annual copper output from 340 000 tons in 2013 to 400 000 tons by 2015.

“As the world’s eighth largest copper mine, the new Kansanshi smelter has very specific requirements for boiler feed, pro-cess and drinking water,” said Nigel Bester, Project Engineer at Veolia’s Engineered Systems & Services division. “The result is a flagship water treatment solution that upgrades river water to match each requirement exactly, with guaranteed availability due to a duty standby design on all process streams.”

Veolia will completely manufacture, test and certify the plant modules at its factory in Sebenza, Gauteng, before they are trans-ported to site. The 40-foot containerised plants are designed to be linked up to one another on site, and will operate as a single

ZEB1, said to be the world’s first truly mobile, hand held, rapid laser mapping system, has been put through a rigorous testing process at the world’s deepest gold mine. The ZEB1 was demonstrated in an ‘up dip stope panel’ at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mponeng mine and the resulting 3D model was proven to conform to exist-ing plans of the mine workings.

“Before commissioning any new equip-ment we always undertake rigorous testing as the environment in which we operate is so extreme – with virgin rock temperatures

As a matter of factOn page 55 of our September 2013 issue in a news item entitled New backstop for conveyor applications we said that German manufac-turer Stieber Clutch is represented in South Africa by AZ Hollink South Africa. We have been advised that this is incorrect. Sprag Components of Benoni (www.spragcompo-nents.co.za) is in fact the official distributor of Stieber products in South Africa. We apologise for the error.

Containerised water plant for Kansanshiplant with multiple output streams to pro-duce a combined 42,5 m3 of treated water per hour.

“The plant has been designed to ensure maximum viability, so we have taken a high-end engineering approach to match each treatment stage’s water with the mine’s requirements. This means that boiler feed water, for instance, isn’t sub-jected to all the treatment steps necessary for drinking water, which is much more viable than treating all the feed water to high-quality drinking standards regardless of its application,” said Bester.

After clarification, iron removal and sand filtration, the drinking water train consists of activated carbon filtration, polishing and ultimately UV disinfection. The boiler feed water will be subjected to the same initial processes, but will be diverted for carbon filtration, double-pass reverse osmosis, passed through a polishing filter and continuous electro deionisation after passing through the initial sand filtration skids. The softened water for use in the smelter’s processes will be diverted from

Interior view of one of the new plant’s modular sections.

the demineralisation stream before the second pass reverse osmosis membranes.

Veolia says its position at the upper-end of the containerised plant market secured the contract against international competitors. Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies South Africa,

tel (+27 11) 663-3600

around 60 deg C and working tempera-tures between 30 and 35 deg,” commented Michael Harcombe, Senior Mine Surveyor at Mponeng. “At these ambient levels, sen-sitive equipment, such as laser scanners, often does not work!

“The results of the ZEB1 test were much better than we could possibly have expected,” he continued. “The model gen-erated from the ZEB1 scanning was placed in the mine’s plans for a comparison with the current excavation and found to con-form to the outline of the workings. We were hoping to compare the results with our existing laser scanning set up. However, the test area was simply too small for tradi-tional laser scanners – another significant advantage for the ZEB1.”

Mponeng is located between the towns of Carletonville and Fochville on the bor-der between Gauteng and North West Province, south-west of Johannesburg. The operation extracts the Ventersdorp Contact Reef (VCR) at depths between 2 400 m and 3 900 m through sequen-tial-grid mining and produces more than

500 000 ounces of gold a year.Developed by CSIRO and commer-

cialised by UK-based 3D Laser Mapping, ZEB1 uses robotic technology called Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). The ZEB1 system includes a light-weight laser scanner mounted on a simple spring mechanism, which continuously scans as the operator walks through the environment. As the scanner loosely oscil-lates about a spring, it produces a rotation that converts 2D laser measurements into 3D fields of view. Its ability to self-localise makes ZEB1 well suited for use indoors, underground and in other covered environments.

AngloGold Ashanti already operates a traditional terrestrial laser scanner at Mponeng. The RIEGL VZ-400, purchased from 3D Laser Mapping, is used to moni-tor workings for signs of deformation. The mine also uses the VZ-400 to determine off-line and grade mining, eradicating the need for later redevelopment and there-fore reworking of areas already mined.3D Laser Mapping, website: www.3dlasermapping.com

Rapid laser mapping system tested at Mponeng


PRODUCT News

Weba Chute Systems has completed the complex design for ten chute systems comprising two units for the tilt conveyors, four for the silo discharge and four for the crushing circuit at Assmang’s Black Rock Mine, about 80 km north-west of Kuruman in the Northern Cape. The challenging design on an additional contract for four diverting chutes on top of the silos has also been completed.

Weba Chute Systems has a long-stand-ing relationship with Black Rock Mine, having previously designed and manufac-tured 29 Weba Chute Systems at this mine. “We receive repeat business from our cus-tomer base for a number of reasons. Before any project is undertaken, we carefully and extensively consult with the customer regarding their specific needs,” says Mark Baller, MD of M&J Engineering.

“It is important to factor in the direc-tion of flow and velocity of the calculated volume and type of material in each appli-cation, while taking into account belt width, belt speed, material sizes, shape and throughput,” he continues.

“M&J Engineering provides designs and solutions that meet these needs and furthermore ensures that the finished product is of the highest possible quality to provide decreased downtime and wear, increased productivity and a favourable return on investment. Our team of highly experienced engineers is available at any stage, before and after installations, to discuss any issues or queries with the cus-tomer,” he adds.

Ted Cruickshank, Projects Manager of M&J Engineering, points out that the sec-ond contract required a unique design, as the transfer point had to cater for a tilting conveyor. Material is transferred from the

Complex design on Black Rock chute systemstilting conveyors that feed the silo and the crushing circuits.

These two chutes are required for the material feed which comes from different sources.

One chute handles lump sizes up to minus 450 mm. These materials are con-veyed and then transferred through the chute system. The capacity is 1 100 t/h on an incoming 1 050 mm wide belt with a speed of 1,85 m/s. The outgoing belt, which feeds the crushing circuit, is 900 mm wide and travels at 2 m/s. The second chute on the tilting conveyors moves material with a particle size of minus 150 mm to the silo circuit on the identically-sized incoming and outgoing belts.

“We had to accurately determine the conveyor feed trajectory to eliminate spillage and at the same time minimise the wear and tear. During our discussions on the design with the mine personnel and their vendors, we utilised FEA (Finite Element Analysis) to ensure that the trans-fer point solution would optimally transfer material in line with the mine’s require-ment,” Cruickshank states.

“It was critical at this point in the project to acquire not only approval on the verifi-cation of the design from the mine input, but also to constructively utilise their feed-back on the process. While this portion of the contract was extremely onerous, it was also very fruitful and will ensure a benchmark transfer point for the mine,” Cruickshank says.

He says that the design on the four chutes on top of the silos was no less complicated. The silos are fed from the tilt conveyors with the material being trans-ferred at a maximum lump size of minus 150 mm, with a throughput of 900 t/h and

a bulk density of 2,5. “We had to cater for reversible conveyors by using shuttle dis-charge boots to ensure that the material is discharged in the direction of the outgoing conveyor. As a specific requirement in this instance, we had to ensure that the toler-ances were exact. This required extensive design and engineering verification during the design process.”

The four chutes which form part of the upgrade on the crushing circuit comprise a grizzly feed chute, a grizzly oversize dis-charge chute to crusher, a fines discharge chute from the grizzly (undersize), and a crusher discharge chute.

“The maximum lump size feeding into the crushing circuit is minus 450 mm and the oversize maximum tonnage is 400 t/h. The grizzly undersize chute is designed to cater for 500 t/h, with a maximum lump size of 450 mm, while the oversize chute feeding the crusher is designed to accommodate 400 t/h at minus 150 mm lump sizes. The crusher discharge chute was designed for ease of maintenance, without affecting the requisite 500 t/h throughput of minus 150 mm crushed material,” says Cruickshank.Mark Baller, M & J Engineering, tel (+27 11) 827-9372

Plant feed head chute onto conveyor at the Nchwaning II plant at Black Rock Mine.

PRODUCT News

FLSmidth has introduced a locally manu-factured and supported apron feeder under its Buffalo product line that effec-tively extends the focus of this equipment brand beyond the coal sector and into the hard rock arena.

“There’s a major demand for apron feed-

Locally manufactured apron feeder introduceders in the African mining industry and establishing a manufacturing and after-sales support hub for this equipment in sub-Saharan Africa will greatly reduce lead times,” says Johan Fourie, FLSmidth’s Buffalo Operations Director. “This line of equipment will be fully supported by field service teams, technical know-how and spares from our facility at Ferrobank, eMalahleni, with additional backup from the greater FLSmidth Group globally.”

The FLSmidth® apron feeder offer-ing includes horizontal and inclined units for extracting bulk materials from under a dump hopper or regulated feed to a crusher. Raw material is dumped directly into a reinforced feed hopper and extracted by the apron feeder ensuring a steady flow of material to the next stage of the process, typically a crushing plant.

The Buffalo product line is managed

An FLSmidth Buffalo feeders and sizers installation.

Polyurethane specialist UMP has expanded its lining range to include high density polyethylene (HDPE), following the suc-cessful installation of HDPE pipe lining for a test loop project at a phosphate plant in Morocco, valued at US$645 000.

This innovation follows the company’s successful development and supply of the world’s first polyurethane lining tech-nology for 3D and 5D pipe bends, as part of its US$2-million contract with Turkish-

from Ferrobank, a facility that employs 180 dedicated personnel and includes an 8 000 m2 manufacturing area with 100 tons of cranage capability and a large area for storage of spare parts.

The Buffalo brand started out as McCarthy Mine Machinery, which had an original focus on the manufacture and sup-ply of feeder breakers to South African coal mines in the 1970s. Buffalo was acquired by the FLSmidth Group in 1999.

Constant product development and innovation has seen the equipment offered under this brand expanding steadily over the years. Today the line-up comprises underground flameproof feed-ers and feeder breakers, ROM stockpile reclaim feeders up to 2 500 t/h, ROM plant feeders, primary underground feeder siz-ers and roller screens.FLSmidth, tel (+27 10) 210-4820

UMP expands lining range to include HDPEbased construction company Tekfen Construction & Installation.

UMP’s Trevor Carolin notes that the com-pany developed the HDPE lining as a follow on from an order requested by Tekfen. “The test loop is designed to calculate friction loss for verification of the pipeline design and, as a result, all the bends are lined with HDPE to prevent abrasion wear.”

Carolin explains that the specialised polyurethane linings for pipe bends, rang-

ing from 350 nominal bore (NB) to 900 NB, at the phosphate plant differ significantly from the requested HDPE lining for the test loop. “Essentially, the pipe has been designed to make optimum use of wear materials. The straight areas, which are approximately 170 km long, are lined with HDPE and all the high wear areas are poly-urethane lined, which makes for a cost effective wear solution,” he adds. UMP, tel (+27 11) 452-1000


PRODUCT News

The DoppiaTrac DR400 double roll crusher from Pilot Crushtec.

The DoppiaTrac DR400 double roll crusher recently unveiled by Pilot Crushtec International provides a perfect example – says the company – of the age-old adage that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’.

This locally produced crusher was designed and built by the Jet Park-based crushing and screening specialist in response to a call from a major mining customer supplying <40 mm coal to national power utility Eskom.

Technical Sales Manager Rudolf van Rooyen explains the back-ground to the creation of the crusher, which has delivered a major step change in the quality and quantity of output for Eskom suppliers.

“Our customer was looking for an alternative to the traditional static impact crushers widely used in the industry. In-depth dis-cussions held at its premises and at the factory with our design team highlighted a number of challenges but also uncovered some potential opportunities,” he says.

Increased output was very much on the agenda – together with eliminating unacceptable levels of fines material produced by conventional equipment.

Another area of concern was excessive downtime as a result of crushers jamming which could lose as much as two hours of production time in a single shift.

The need for mobility was also highlighted. A tracked crusher that can be easily trammed to different locations on a mine or in a stockyard is a far more attractive proposition in comparison to an immobile semi-permanent static plant.

It was from these collaborative discussions that the DoppiaTrac DR400 double roll crusher – the first track mounted product of its type to be produced in South Africa – was conceived.

After a few months in operation, it looks as if Pilot Crushtec International’s design team has ticked all the right boxes in terms of specification and performance.

“Our customer’s DoppiaTrac DR400 is producing 200 mm lump coal down to Eskom grade <40 mm in one pass at a rate of 400 tonnes per hour, with minimal fines. Not only has the hourly rate significantly improved but downtime has been drastically cut back thanks to the crusher’s onboard load sensing hydraulic sys-tem and dual directional crusher rolls,” says van Rooyen.

He adds that the DoppiaTrac DR400 is not only highly produc-tive but that the tracked crusher is also exceptionally mobile and can be moved to different locations with a single operator thanks to its wireless or cable connected remote control system. Pilot Crushtec International, tel (+27 11) 842-5600

Double roll crusher joins the Pilot Crushtec range


PRODUCT News

Brelko Conveyor Products has expanded its product range of conveyor spillage control devices by adding a series of patented Brelko belt tracking units.

The result of a comprehensive and extended research, development and service testing programme, the designs have now been finalised and Brelko is rolling out the range to both the local and international bulk materials handling industry.

Brelko’s belt tracking units are used to maintain the correct alignment on both the load and return runs of a conveyor belt and to correct ‘belt wander’ which can be caused by a

number of factors. It must be born in mind that belt tracking units can only correct the results of the faulty installation and operating conditions of a conveyor

system; the basic causes should be identified and corrected, if possible. Brelko says technical services are available to

assist in doing so, as well as to advise as to the correct location and installation of tracking units.

The Brelko units are available to cater for all standard belt widths, troughing angles and system configurations.

The tracking units consist of a robust modular carriage arrangement, incorporating specially designed sealed bearings, and are fitted with standard rubber or polyure-

thane lagged rolls. Brelko, tel (+27 11) 013-4000

A full range of SABS-approved WEG CSW series pushbutton and pilot lights, incor-porating LED technology, is available from the Zest WEG Group at an affordable price.

South African vibrating equipment spe-cialist and OEM Joest has supplied most of South Africa’s major mines with custom-built vibrating feeders and screens, with a significant machine population operating in the heavy and precious metal and min-erals field.

Joest has grown into one of the largest South African owned and operated OEMs of vibration equipment. The South African Joest operation has been fully indepen-dent for 25 years and shares no links with the German JÖST.

Joest recently fielded an order for an additional two large dewatering machines from a mineral sands operation on the Western Cape coast. Newly appointed CEO Derrick Alston says this is an extremely

Joest wins order to supply mineral sands mineunusual application in terms of the immense throughput the screens have to handle. The new units will be delivered in February 2014.

“Joest has suppl ied this operation since 1998 and there are currently 12 of these large dewatering screens installed,” he adds. “It was amazing to see, dur-ing a recent site visit, just how efficiently these units are still per-forming under such extremely difficult circumstances.”

Commenting on the com-pany’s prospects for 2014, Joest MD Kim Schöpflin says the outlook is extremely positive, with continued growth expected in line with the robust year-on-year growth Joest has experienced for the past 38 years.

“Our sights are set on steady expan-sion further into Africa, in order to take advantage of the massive potential on this continent for our products,” she says. “Historically, we’ve been strong in the

The Joest team – Joest has grown into one of the largest South Afri-can owned and operated OEMs of vibration equipment.

SADC region, but we believe we can also achieve similar success beyond this region.

“In the longer term, our objective is to expand the vibrating machinery arena into complementary areas of the process equipment field, including fine aperture size screening. However, our core company values of service, quality and technology will continue to underpin our existing offering to our customers in the mining industry. Joest is known for this high level of service and it will remain our highest commitment as we approach our fourth decade of operations.”

Achieving a high BBBEE rating is an inte-gral component of Joest’s strategy and current BBBEE efforts focus on employment policies, procurement and developing in-house skills, areas in which the company has already made considerable progress. Joest is also positioning itself to align with the requirements of the Mining Charter with the objective of achieving compliance by the 2014 deadline.Derrick Alston, Joest, tel (+27 11) 923-9000

Conveyor spillage control range extended

Brelko’s belt track-ing system – 3/5 roll troughing frame.

Affordable pushbutton/pilot light rangeWEG says it has used its leading edge tech-nology and development capability to design these products, which are all sup-plied with the industry standard 22 mm mounting hole.

The user friendly and durable WEG CSW series pushbutton and pilot lights are used in many industrial applications and environments and are now available in complete sets – for example, pushbuttons complete with auxiliary block.

Designed to offer the ruggedness required for harsh industrial applications, these products are IP66 (IEC 60529) rated (totally insulated) and include a complete line of accessories.

The ergonomic design of the mounting hole allows for manual tightening of the device, without requiring the use of addi-tional tools, offering a simpler and safer tightening method. The entire series can be quickly mounted with just one ‘click’ and can be disassembled just as easily, using a flat screwdriver. The contact blocks are individually assembled and do not require the use of tools for installation.Zest WEG Group, tel (+27 11) 723-6000


PRODUCT News

New to BLT SA’s range of SAMSON bulk materials handling equipment is the recently launched MF0814T material feeder on tracks, for enhanced manoeuvrability.

“This new tracked machine, which is modelled on the original SAMSON® mate-rial feeder, has been developed to meet the demands of the mining and quar-rying sector,” says Keith Dowie, Project Development Engineer for BLT SA’s SAMSON bulk materials handling equip-ment. “These automated handling systems are designed to join together fixed and mobile equipment, offering flexibility and an economical alternative to expensive fixed bulk handling installations.

“This new robust MF0814T tracked material feeder, with a holding capacity of up to 100 tons, is designed for high accu-racy in discharge control and can operate efficiently in arduous environments. This system can efficiently handle materials with a bulk density up to 3,2 t/m³ and lumps up to 400 mm. Typical materials include limestone, coal and coke, raw slag,

Tracked material feeder launchedalternative fuels, clays and shale, as well as heavy mineral ores.”

This system, which is said to be a flexible and cost efficient alternative to conven-tional underground hoppers, is installed above ground by simply being bolted to a flat concrete slab foundation, eliminat-ing costly civil engineering works. Even in fixed installations this portable system can be easily relocated for future plant development.

SAMSON material feeders are suitable for heavy duty applications with conti-nuous use, including impact loading from articulated dump trucks and large loading shovels, providing a buffer storage capac-ity, without the need for large ramps or underground pits. Since material is drawn from the tipping truck in a controlled stream, dust generation is significantly reduced, minimising environmental pollution.

A wide belt design, with vertical hop-per sides, enables fast truck discharge and the efficient conveying of any material,

New to BLT SA’s range of SAMSON bulk materials handling equipment is the recently launched MF0814T material feeder on tracks.

without the risk of blockage. Steel apron bar technology provides the strength of an apron feeder, with clean operation. Conveyor chains are always outside the material flow, which means chain wear is reduced and inspection is easy.

The MF0814T is self-propelled and is powered by an integrated Tier 3 diesel engine. Self-steering through a remote control unit can be deployed quickly and independently for flexibility, total control and optimum efficiency. A key safety fea-ture is an emergency stop facility. Optional emergency pull cords can also be installed on each side of the machine.

Keith Dowie, BLT SA, tel (+27 82) 898-7717, e-mail: [email protected]


PRODUCT News

Index to advertisersAEL Mining Services 14 APE Pumps 72B&E International 34Babcock Equipment 20Barloworld Equipment 73Bell Equipment Company 7bme FCbme OBCDynamic Fluid Control 22ELB Equipment 44-45Energyst 32Fabricated Steel Manufacturing Company 58Flexicon Africa 13

FLSmidth IFC/1Joy Global Africa 71M & J Engineering 69Manitou 24MDM Engineering 10Metso Minerals 36Minova/Orica 8MMD Mineral Sizing 66Multotec Group 28-29Novatek IBCPANalytical 60Sandvik Mining 50Scaw Metals Group 68

SENET 64SEW Eurodrive 2Southern Mapping Company 4srk consulting 42Tega Industries 52Veyance Technologies Africa 16Vital Engineering 61Voith 75Weir Minerals Africa 48WorleyParsons 53Zest Weg Group 27

The MSA Airline breathing apparatus and four-user filter system, which was launched locally in October 2013, consists of a face piece connected to an air sup-ply via a compressed airline. MSA Africa Respiratory Products Manager Suraksha Mohun states that the face piece comes in a positive or constant flow option, with

MSA introduces Airline breathing apparatusa lung governed demand valve that sup-plies the exact amount of air required by the user during inhalation.

“The continuous and economical air supply from the MSA Airline range ensures greater manoeuvrability in tight spaces. What’s more, the lung governed demand valve is linked to the air source via a change-over valve fixed to the waist belt, thereby preventing the risk of suffocation from tensile force transmitted to the face piece,” she explains.

The MSA Airline range functions inde-pendently of the ambient atmosphere, and can be used in any situation where the ambient air is not breathable as a result of contaminants or oxygen deficiency, and where filtering devices do not provide suf-ficient protection.

Due to its lightweight, robust, compact design and almost maintenance-free sys-tem, the MSA Airline breathing apparatus is – says Mohun – ideally suited to a num-A worker equipped with the MSA breathing apparatus.

The southern hemisphere’s largest valve factory is located in Johannesburg, right on the doorstep of all Africa’s mines, and has for many years successfully met the requirements of even the harshest valve operating environments.

“Africa does not need to look to Australia, South America or the Far East for valves, because we make them much closer to home here in South Africa,” said Pat Stander, Executive Director of Aveng Manufacturing DFC’s mining division. “We also provide technical advice on the correct valve for any application free of charge.”

ber of applications where a standard and more bulky compressed air breathing apparatus would restrict the user in con-fined spaces.

“The continual air supply makes the MSA Airline range suitable for long duration work in applications such as sandblasting, spray painting and repair and maintenance work in industries that include under-ground and surface mining, construction, agriculture, shipping and general industry,” she adds.

Although the MSA Airline breathing apparatus is handheld, the filter unit can also be mounted to ensure greater ease of use, depending on the application. An added benefit is that the anti-static, non-kinking breathing hose is available in numerous lengths. What’s more, the lock-ing pressure regulator and unique UltraFlo valve technology ensure that flow rates are never compromised. Suraksha Mohun, MSA Africa, tel (+27 11) 610-2600

Mining valves continuously upgraded by DFCStander said that DFC strives to be a

truly African concern, combining local manufacture with distribution channels across central, southern and eastern Africa. Channels to West Africa are currently at an advanced stage of development through Ghana.

DFC has three main valve ranges for mining applications: Saunders, Insamcor and RF Valves. Product development within these ranges is ongoing, with RF pinch valves recently having undergone an upgrade to replace fabricated valve bodies with castings that support the cur-

vature of the sleeve at all points, leading to improved valve closure.

Within the Insamcor knife-gate valve range, the company has introduced a bi-directional design that delivers superior sealing. Stainless steel models have been developed for the acid intensive applica-tions found in the copper leaching plants of the Copperbelt.

The Saunders product line has also been extended to include a stainless steel option on all models, allowing these valves to be effective in corrosive environments. Aveng Manufacturing DFC, tel (+27 11) 748-0200

MODERN MINING - Crown Publications - Leading B2B … · MODERN MINING IN THIS ISSUE ... work by Rio...

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