In the wake of a renewed national electricity crisis, the city of Cape Town has just announced that it is ready to start creating its own power supply grid. It seems that the city’s long-standing battle with the national government and the energy regulator to avoid load shedding, by sourcing its own electricity, has finally paid off.

Could this be the first step towards securing uninterrupted power for the country?

This would certainly be good news for the mining industry. Hard hit by Eskom’s power outages, the mining industry has seen a steady drop in output over recent months. Data from Statistics SA confirms this with figures revealing a mining production decline of 2.9 percent year-on-year at the close of 2019. 

Besides the unpredictability of electricity supply, the mining industry faces a myriad of challenges that impede its growth and sustainability. These include a constrained demand for industrial metals, slowing global manufacturing activity, structural and logistical limitations, rising input costs, and a growing list of additional obstacles.

Continued innovation may be the saving grace for this beleaguered industry.

There is no doubt about the economic importance of mining – in South Africa mining accounts for up to 60% of South Africa's exports, which is vital for bringing in cash into the country. The minerals it exports are vital to the economies of the world for manufacturing. 

Global manufacturing leader of mechanical pipe joining solutions, Victaulic, understands this strategic value and understands the pitfalls facing mining today.

“In such an uncertain environment, it is vital that costs are contained, and production downtime is kept to an absolute minimum,” says Marcel Ley, Victaulic Regional Manager. “Coupled with this, an unblemished health and safety record is a prerequisite to building trust not only amongst investors, but workers as well.”

This is where Victaulic, through continuous investment in innovative solutions for the mining industry, has been able to address the needs of its global client base by supplying products that ensure maximum profitability, support safety and reduce system down time.     

“As an example, our Series 725S Diverter Valve is the industry’s first grooved-end valve specifically for paste backfill lines. This valve delivers significant time and cost savings in the field,” says Ley.

Ley explains that this product eliminates the need for repositioning of fill lines, thereby reducing handling and increasing the efficiency of the operation. Additionally, the valve provides 180-degree service, so there is no need for employees to manually redeploy backfill piping systems to other areas within the mine operation.

This has both a time and risk benefit, which is good news for the bottom line. In fact, the valve can reduce maintenance downtime by up to 95 percent and generating up to 60 percent savings in annual maintenance costs. And when your workers are spending less time underground performing tasks other than mining, they are spending less time in harm’s way performing hazardous activities. 

Ley quantifies the exorbitant cost of mining downtime with the example of a customer who describes a R250 000 loss for every hour that his plant is inoperable. This means that maintenance and the installation of key equipment and facilities needs to be carried out with as little delay as possible. 

Victaulic’s Series 795 Knife Gate Valve was designed to support this time-saving line of attack. Offering a flexible and leak-tight alternative to conventional products, the valve is easily assembled, disassembled, moved and reused. All the parts in the valve that are subject to wear are contained in a single cartridge kit. This alleviates the need to replace the entire valve when maintenance is required - the cartridge is simply swapped out. A 2 to 3-hour maintenance cycle per traditional valve spent loosening and replacing flanges now morphs into a 15 minute in-line replacement. 

“Mines need to look at the bigger picture when they are considering the pipe joining method that they’ll work with. The cost of a mechanical pipe joining may turn out to be negligible when the cost of labour, lost opportunity costs, safety risks, transportation costs and downtime associated with traditional pipe joining methods, like welding and flanging, are added to the equation,” says Ley. “We need to accept that profitability only becomes possible when plants are operable.”