Mine excursion
Sishen has focused on optimising drilling and blasting
to improve the load and haul operations. Among
others, the mine is blasting bigger blocks.
Kumba Iron Ore —
Sishen’s revival
Sishen has
stood its
ground against
relentless
headwinds
and remains a
giant in iron ore
mining, writes
Leon Louw, who
visited the mine
recently.
L
ike all mines do, one of the oldest
operations in South Africa is
destined to eventually run out of
steam. But Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine
in the Northern Cape Province of South
Africa is hanging in there, as it has done
for the past 70 years.
An aerial view of the gargantuan open
pit reveals no secrets and belies the true
depth of this mining and engineering feat.
But the red-stained, iron-rich soil and a
vast network of haul roads criss-crossing
the immense hole in the ground, tells a
story of toil that got under way in the late
1940s and today, continues unabated. The
open pit, divided into two (a north pit and
a south pit) for ease of operations, is 14km
long and on average 2.5km wide (at its
widest, it is about 5km).
As the chopper hovers over the dusty
Northern Cape Kalahari, the colossal
excavators and massive haul trucks at
the bottom of the mine look tiny, and so
close to surface. But they are digging out
[12] MINING MIRROR AUGUST 2018
iron ore at a depth of 275m, surrounded
by neat stacks of benches and dizzying
heights of high walls. They will do so for
at least the next 13 years. From the air,
one cannot help but feel that Sishen must
surely be close to being mined out, but the
rusty dust at the bottom of the pit is, in
fact, manna from the sky for Kumba Iron
Ore’s management team, as Sishen — and
many other iron ore mines across the
world — was literally saved when iron ore
prices nearly doubled from their lows of
late 2015.
The fifth-largest global seaborne supplier
of iron ore not only escaped care and
maintenance status during the downturn,
which started in 2015, but is expected to
churn out product more efficiently, and less
costly, for at least the short term, or until
commodity prices dictate its fate once
again. Technology, however, will play an
increasingly important role in the survival,
and ultimately in the revival, of Sishen, a
South African mining giant.