ON SITE
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. Currently the mine is renting
three excavators, six Articulated Dump
Trucks (ADTs) and a few water trucks.
Up and running
“The mechanical staff eventually got the
equipment up and running in April 2017 and
the mine started producing iron ore again,
albeit in very small volumes. However, in
August 2017, Demaneng was processing
ore at about 50% of mine capacity. At that
tempo the mine was on target to produce
anywhere between 450 000 and 500 000
tonnes per year.
In parallel, Afrimat Contracting
International commenced with the
construction and operation of a railway load
out station (LOS) about three kilometres
from the mine site and towards the end
of 2017 negotiated a million-tonne per
annum take off agreement with Transnet.
Very recently a fleet of three new CAT980
loaders were acquired for the LOS affording
Afrimat the ability to load a 11 600ton train
in under nine hours.
Afrimat inherited two Dense Media
Separation (DMS) beneficiation plants
which, Odendaal says is more efficient
than using a jig. “When we arrived, these
Since then the mine has started
replacing its ageing mining fleet. “The
equipment is now nearing 16 000 hours
and we are carefully considering small
interventions on replacement 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. They 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
www.equipmentandhire.co.za
Most of the existing equipment on site was refurbished and the company didn’t
procure any new trucks or equipment.
MARCH 2020
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