• EXCURSION
A 360 ° SUSTAINABILITY
VOYAGE IN COPPER
By Sharyn Macnamara
Join African Mining on an excursion with a difference as mining and development company , SHiP takes us on a sustainability voyage – 14 years in the making – to the burgeoning copper district of the Northern Cape in South Africa , where copper mining , the community , the environment and a renewable future meet in harmony .
Supplied Big Tree Copper ( Elria Maré )
Cathodes , removed from the electrowinning cells , being moved to the stripping area by an operator .
First port of call : Big Tree Copper The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of the country . The area is well-known not only for the beautiful carpet of Namaqualand flowers that emerges in spring , but also for a history steeped in copper mining , and more recently , for being a topic of discussion amongst investors keen to back a resource essential to the future of the earth and mankind . This region , rich in copper , with strategic importance particularly in the newly emerging electrified world of BEVs , wind-turbines and a greener world , has been the focus of SHIP , a copper mining and development company founded by CEO Shirley Hayes in 2008 .
In the heart of this semi-desert area , where a hot and dry climate during the summer months is juxtaposed to very cold winter months with snow on the mountains , lies Okiep - the oldest mining
42 • African Mining • January 2023 town in South Africa , just 10km north of Springbok . By the 1870s it was ranked the richest copper mine in the world . A few kilometres west of Okiep , lies Nababeeb – the largest of Namaqualand ’ s copper mining towns . Mining began here in the 1850s and from 1876 the ore was transported by train to Port Nolloth for export . The mine closed during the copper slump of 1919 , but reopened in 1937.1
A mutually beneficial symbiosis It is here where two historical opposites are juxtaposed too – mining and its surrounding environment . However , on this occasion they meet in a symbiotic relationship . Technological modernisation meets the ecosystem of the area in a unique , mutually beneficial relationship in the form of the company , Big Tree Copper – presently the only copper producer in South Africa recycling previously dumped mining waste through overground processing at the
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