IN CONVERSATION
How many underground mining
equipment manufacturers are there in
South Africa?
There are only a handful. The industry
has historically been dominated by large
international players like Sandvik, Epiroc
(previously Atlas Copco) and Caterpillar.
However, we are seeing more and more
interest in South African equipment.
Rham is now one of the key players in
the industry.
South Africa’s economy has not been
performing the way we would have
liked. Has the mining industry been
adversely affected?
Have you partnered with a drilling
company?
Yes, we have partnered with a South
Africa company. They manufacture bore
hole drill rigs, but there are no local
companies that produce exploration
drilling and blasthole drill rigs. All these
machines are currently imported.
South African
manufactured
underground
equipment is
as good as any
other international
company’s product.
In fact, we have
proven that the price
and performance are
much better.”
www.equipmentandhire.co.za
Yes, the mining sector has been affected.
At the moment it seems that everything
has grinded to a halt. We were extremely
busy during the first quarter of the year,
but since then there has been a massive
lull. We are fortunate that we are still
busy and there is a lot of interest in new
machines, so we do, however, have
enough work for the next five months.
But we’ve realised that we cannot have
all our eggs in one basket, and therefore
made a strategic decision to diversify
into surface drilling and the agricultural
sectors as well. More than 95% of the
machines we currently produce are
underground mining equipment, so
diversification became a pressing issue.
Kevin Reynders, managing director of Rham Equipment.
What will Rham’s competitive
advantage be in manufacturing these
drill rigs?
Costs. We have already seen with
our other equipment that, as a local
manufacturer with weak buying power, we
are able to manufacture equipment much
cheaper than the big players. We can then
also tailor make these products to suit
our South African mining conditions. The
drilling companies have some very good
ideas that we will design around.
Rham has always been an innovative
company with a big focus on new
technology. Will you follow that same
philosophy when building these new
drill rigs?
It’s quite simple to adapt any automation
or new technology, however, with the
rigs, we would rather build something
that is robust and easy to understand. If
you do exploration work somewhere in
rural Africa, you need a reliable machine
and not bells and whistles.
Our Load Haul Dump (LHD)
technology is high on the agenda and we
are specifically focused on real time data.
The aim is to sit anywhere in the world
and be able to see what the LHDs are
doing. This technology can be adapted to
any of our equipment.
Rham is now venturing into the
agricultural world. Can you tell us a
bit more about what you are currently
working on?
We did research amongst farmers to
determine what the challenges are. One
of them was that a tractors’ tyres are
designed to drive in only one direction. It
was something simple we never actually
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