ON THE GROUND
Alphamin has managed to hack a way through thick forest from Walikale to Bisie to build a road , which is about 35km .
Trevor Faber , chief operating officer at Bisie , is known to have built several mines from scratch in remote areas of Africa , and is doing it again in Kivu .
“ We will only have three contractors on site : the mining contractor , the earthworks and civils contractor , and the SMPP contractor ,” says Faber . The civil and earthworks contractor will most likely be South Africa-based Teichmann ’ s DRC subsidiary , Kongo River .
Kongo River ’ s fleet of Bell equipment has already started the preliminary earthworks and bush clearing for Bisie ’ s airstrip , construction of which is imminent . Kongo River recently completed an extremely successful project at Randgold ’ s Kibali gold mine , north-east of Bisie in the Orientale Province , and is one of only a few companies that really understands the operating environment in the DRC . Reliant SPRL is the mining contractor appointed to develop the first phase of the decline , and is based in Kolwezi , situated in the Lualaba Province in the south of the DRC .
The contract for the first phase of mine development ends in March 2018 , and tenders for the second phase of mine development have been received from several international mining contractors . Group Five Construction has been appointed as the SMPP contractor . “ It is important that contractors know the eastern parts of the DRC , especially the logistics and infrastructure . Group Five has done a lot of good work at Kibali , as has Teichmann . It is difficult for contractors to do their first job in these parts of the DRC . It is a very complex country to operate in ,” says Faber . In addition to the contractors already mentioned , engineering consultants DRA have been on site since the start of the project .
Procuring equipment Alphamin has procured a fleet of mining equipment from underground hard rock mining specialists Atlas Copco , now Epiroc ( the company recently split its operations into an industrial arm , still known as Atlas Copco , and its mining division , which is called Epiroc ). The equipment includes three drill rigs ( one for the face , one to install support , and a long-hole drill rig ), and a 10-tonne class LHD .
After blasting , the LHD will dump the ore into rigid-body tipper trucks . Alphamin has elected to use rigid-body tipper trucks underground instead of the conventional articulated dump trucks ( ADTs ). “ We visited several mines in Peru and China where they use these rigid-body tipper trucks . In Peru , the Volvo rigid tipper is popular underground , and based on their safety and performance levels , we decided to acquire four of these trucks , which will be sourced from Volvo , Scania , or MAN ,” says Faber .
The Atlas Copco LHD is a 10-tonne class loader and the tipper trucks will be equipped with an 18cm ³ bin . When fully loaded , the truck will carry about 20t of material . The specific gravity of the Bisie ore is 3.5t / m ³, and Faber says the bin sizes on the rock-moving equipment had to be reduced to prevent damage to the hydraulic system , suspension , and transmission . The trucks will tip the ore on surface stockpiles , from where it will be fed by Bell front-end loaders into the processing plant . A set of primary , secondary , and tertiary crushers will reduce the run of mine ore from 450mm to 80 % passing minus 10mm . The minus 10mm material forms the feed for the jigs . The underflow from the jigs is fed through a series of shaking tables and spirals to create a final concentrate containing about 62 % tin . A flotation step is required to remove the sulphide minerals from the tin concentrate , following which the concentrate is thickened and filtered to reduce its moisture content . Filtration will be carried out on horizontal belt filters , supplied by South African company Roytech .
Shipping out Once bagged , the tin will have to be trucked to Goma , and this is where the operation becomes tricky . The road to Goma is in a very bad condition ; however , Alphamin is assisting the North Kivu Province in upgrading the road over the next six months . The strategy is to have rough-terrain 4 × 4 trucks cover the portion of road from the village of Logu to the mine ( about 35km ), which is extremely rough conditions . At Logu , the product is then reloaded onto normal road trucks that will transport it further to Goma , where the customers will take over the logistics , and truck the tin to either Dar es Salaam in Tanzania or to Mombasa in Kenya . TMK , a local DRC transport company , has been contracted to
20
FEBRUARY 2018