CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Modernisation was a vital step in building a sustainable South African mining industry, Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) CEO Chris Griffith told the Mining Indaba on Tuesday.

The 50-year-old Amplats head, who has served the Anglo American group for the last 25 years, told the busy conference attended by 7 000 mining professionals that the restructuring of his platinum giant and its repositioning were insufficient for long-term sustainability.

“We also need to modernise,” he reiterated, adding that modernisation had to be carried out in a manner that was bold and durable and which did not merely paper over the cracks.

While providing a consistent generation of acceptable returns to shareholders and steering away from combative capital/labour relations, the company was implementing productivity- and safety-enhancing mechanisation with a labour force that had been instilled with a sense of ownership through employee share ownership programmes.

The better productivity that modernisation would provide would provide social and economic benefits at a time when mechanisation was both possible and affordable.

The mining industry had spent 80% less than the petroleum sector on modernisation, yet its costs were on the way to doubling in less than five years.

With margins being squeezed, modernisation simply had to be embraced and the usual small incremental change philosophy had to be jettisoned.

“Major innovation is exactly what the industry needs,” Griffith said, adding that extra low profile equipment and ultra low profile equipment were being tested at an Amplats mine on the western limb [of the Bushveld Igneous Complex] and a mine was being completely replanned for the new equipment on the eastern limb.

Already mechanised were the Unki mine in Zimbabwe and joint ventures on the eastern limb had been operating as trackless bord-and-pillar mines for some time.

At process level, the company was the first to introduce fine-grind technology that upped platinum group metal liberation by 3%, and vehicle proximity devices and instope netting had greatly improved underground safety.

Proving more difficult to bring to fruition was the company’s hard-rock cutting project, for which a trial disc-cutting machine would be unveiled in the latter half of 2015.

Further potential game-changing technology was also being worked on, including lasers that were able to soften rock to allow for cutting that would replace traditional drilling and blasting, and the deployment of  three-dimensional automated robotic equipment that remotely detects geological features.

“No single company can keep pace on its own and other industry perspectives are being included,” Griffith said, adding that future Amplats employees would need to be X-box compliant.

For South African mining to deliver on its huge potential would require industrial and commercial pragmatism and modernisation was the key.