As part of its coal-to-liquids (CTL) and gas-to-chemicals (GTC) processes, Sasol produces ammonia, the building block for ammonium nitrate, which is the raw material required for the production of Sasol’s mining explosives.

With Sasol’s approach to group its businesses within the nitrogen value chain, the company’s mining explosives business operates under the Sasol Nitro banner.

Sasol Nitro, in turn, also has a joint venture (JV) with mining explosives and explosives accessories producer Dyno Nobel, of the US, which gives the company access to key explosives and explosives accessory technology.

The Sasol Dyno Nobel JV’s factory is at Ekandustria, in Mpumalanga, where pyrotechnic shocktube delayed detonators are produced for sale in Southern Africa.

In the current economic climate and the very competitive nature of the Southern Africa market, the company is experiencing what Sasol Nitro MD Marius Brand describes as “more selective purchasing of explosives and explosives accessories” from Southern Africa’s mining companies, focusing on higher effi- ciencies and more effective blasting.

“Rock removed is being more intensely measured in addition to the traditional strong focus on the input unit price of product,” Brand tells Mining Weekly.

Currently, after the collapse of international chemical commodity prices, there is a global surplus of ammonium nitrate and mines have been impacted on by lower commodity prices. Sasol Nitro’s explosives business has also seen the impact of increased mining “safety related” stoppages.

Exports into Africa have generally declined, although the recent upsurge in the copper and other mineral prices has resulted in a rise in demand for mining explosives and explosives accessories.

Sasol Nitro’s explosives business strongly focuses on the supply of explosives and explosives accessories into both underground mining and opencast mining, and believes that its product range can add value to both of these sectors.

It is a significant supplier of explosives to South Africa’s underground platinum and gold mines, and has considerable penetration into the region’s opencast coal-mining market, where it provides mainly bulk mining explosives.

Complementing its supply of explosives into these markets is the supply of explosives accessories, sourced from the Sasol Dyno Nobel JV.

“We are not only supplying explosives industry commodities, but we are also heavily focused on providing value adding services to mines,” says Brand.

In arriving at opencast mines with trucked bulk mining explosives, Sasol Nitro typically oversees to the filling of the drilled holes with explosives and installs the above-ground delayed detonation system.

“We also occasionally provide a blasting service, mainly on remote sites, but by and large blasting is done by the mining companies themselves,” he adds.

Factors Brand rates as crucial for an explosives and explosives accessories company to be successful in South Africa are the safety, reliability of supply and precision of blasting solutions provided.

He says that the trend away from the use of capfuse and igniter cord towards the increasing use of shocktube technology highlights the market’s demand for safer operations, and says that “precision, timing and the absence of dead zones when blasting fails to take place” are critical.

He sees pyrotechnic shocktube techno- logy as providing major benefits in the predictability of blasts and accuracy of rock displacement.