Key for the future – mining in southern Africa
While recently consulting at a number of underground mining sites in southern Africa, I spent quite a bit of time travelling. This gave me time to reflect on the current mining industry in southern Africa and the industry 25 years ago, when I lived and worked on the Zambian copper belt.
Southern Africa has enormous mineral endowment in terms of diamonds, platinum and palladium, gold, bauxite, phosphate, manganese, and copper (in Zambia and the DRC in particular). This endowment continues to support many countries’ exports and contributes to their GDP, governments, and local communities.
Unfortunately with many commodity prices falling during the past three years, many companies in southern Africa are facing tough times in terms of falling revenues and increasing production costs.
One thing that stands out for me is that, unless companies embrace change in terms of technology and innovation, they will continue to fall behind their competitors. Change is inevitable – look around you! Yes we can make operations more efficient by pushing the workers harder and harder but I think we all agree that you can only push them so far, after which other changes are required. Unfortunately we all have a fear of change because it’s difficult to appreciate the unknown. We are much more comfortable doing things the way we know how to.
I take off my hat to the companies that have brought on change to their new or greenfield projects. But for many existing or brownfield projects, change appears to be much more difficult.
For change to be successful the following is required:
- Mechanization and innovation – the optimal mining equipment and mining methods relative to the orebody and based on best practices need to be established.
- A robust detailed mine plan needs to be developed, where optimal production rates and cut-off grades are established. The company must then support the plan in terms of funding and setting of achievable long-term goals.
- The workforce, supervisors, technical personnel and management need to be continually educated and skilled to allow them to complete the tasks identified in the plan.
- The new plan must be transparent to governments and unions in order for them to be able to support it.
Mechanization and innovation
Many people ask me what mechanization is in relation to mining operations. In my view, it is replacing the more manual tasks with modern mining equipment in order to improve the overall productivity of a person and the operation, e.g. large automated production drills replacing manually-operated jack hammers.
Replacing manual mining techniques with mechanized techniques normally results in changes to mining methods, backfill requirements and materials handling practices.
For this mechanization to occur effectively, correct planning is required to ensure that all equipment (trucks, drills and loaders) is working at maximum capacity, is correctly sized for the given task, and that no bottlenecks exist in the system (bottlenecks prevent the system from operating at its optimal or maximum throughput). Mines work well when all the equipment and workers are synchronized and balanced every working hour of the day.
The plan
Australia and Canada are seen as leaders in underground mechanization using underground mobile mining equipment including development drills (jumbos), load-haul-dump units (LHDs), and articulated trucks. As a leading mining consultancy for more than 30 years, AMC has been involved in assisting many mining operations plan and transfer to mechanized mining practices.
AMC supports its planning approaches and assumptions with operational benchmarking, and captures detailed productivity and cost data from a site (for example, information about the life of a drill bit or the cost of that drill bit) and compares it against other operations that it has benchmarked. This provides accurate performance and cost data as a basis for future mine plans. The benchmarking can also be used to highlight operating problems and bottlenecks in existing operations.
By understanding what efficient and innovative mining equipment can achieve, and together with detailed mine scheduling, benchmarking and financial analysis, AMC can design achievable mine plans based on optimal production rates and cut-off grades.
Education and skilling of workforce
Unfortunately, there have been many projects in southern Africa that have attempted to mechanize but have found it extremely challenging, with some ending in failure. One stumbling block is having the appropriate workforce. In most cases, significant reskilling and training is required, not just of the workers but of their supervisors and supporting management and technical teams.
In general, I find that older operations with large workforces find it much harder to implement change. In extreme cases, it might be easier to temporarily shut the operation and then rebuild it, with the new plan and trained workforce in place. I know many people will shudder at this thought!
Mechanization can also mean reduced workforce numbers. However, governments will not be keen to allow massive redundancies to occur and could impose restrictions on a company’s social license to operate. Planning needs to ensure that redundant workers are sufficiently skilled and trained to position them for new employment opportunities, either within the company or elsewhere.
In addition, individuals need to take on responsibility for their own effectiveness. Often it is far easier to blame management for poor performance. However, with the right education and skilling and the right plan or target, people will be given the opportunity to be effective in their workplace. It is up to them what they do with the opportunity.
Transparency, unions and governments
When working towards mechanization, transparency is key to success. Detailed plans need to be drafted that make transparent what is expected of people (workers, supervisors, managers, and CEOs) and the operation itself. Transparency cannot be achieved unless it is clear to all what it is that a mining company intends to do based on what its goals might be. Transparency will also help minimize the distrust between companies and unions, which remains a common problem in Africa (there were no winners from the 2012 Marikana miners’ strike in RSA).
In many cases dialogue between companies and governments also needs to improve. Having detailed transparent long-term plans can assist in this dialogue.
Closing comment
Lastly…… It’s not only Africa that needs to change to keep abreast of the pack. Mining has become a globally competitive business. Unless companies continue to search for new ideas and accept change there can only be one outcome – falling towards the back of the pack.
Frank Greblo
Principal Mining Engineer
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