MINE EXCURSION
Since August 2018 Demaneng has been producing close to its original target of one million tonnes of iron ore per annum.
unit on the larger plant caused massive bottlenecks. “Their
DMS design, though, is really good. The problem was providing
consistent and reliable Run of Mine (RoM) feed, so one of our
first actions was to invest about R35-million in rebuilding a new
upgraded crusher,” says Odendaal.
At the other DMS plant Afrimat deployed their mobile crusher
division to supply the ROM feed. However, they are in the
process of replacing all mobile crushers with a fixed plant to
save further processing costs. Mobile crushing is more expensive
than fixed plant crushing in terms of the energy input, staffing,
and maintenance. The two beneficiation plants are about three
kilometres apart.
Replacing an ageing fleet
The mine has also started replacing its ageing mining fleet.
“The equipment is now nearing 16 000 hours and we are
carefully considering small interventions on replacement
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African Mining February 2020
and or rebuilds. At the moment that is a work in progress.
Although the stripping ratio at 1 to 1.5 is relatively low,
the production rate since August 2018 has accelerated
significantly. The inherited mining equipment didn’t have
the capacity to handle an increase in ore production,
which necessitated the mine to hire additional equipment,
something Afrimat is not known to do.
“One of the optimisation projects is to increase our own
mining fleet over the rental equipment that we currently
employ to supplement the mining. The Afrimat business
model prefers to own and control our mining fleet; a strategy
that stems from our quarry operations. All Afrimat quarries
own and operate their own equipment. This strategy
has worked for us but due to the significant investment
requirement, we had to prioritise capital investments and
we decided not to do it on the mining equipment side
because rental equipment is readily available,” says Odendaal.
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