Australia-based diversified mining major Rio Tinto’s Simandou iron-ore project, in Guinea, will be among the key topics of interest for global energy management specialist Schneider Electric at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba.

The event will take place from February 8 to 11 at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

“Our presence in African countries and our mining, minerals and metals solution sales, and services resources located across the continent, has meant that we remain focused on tracking most projects and companies that are represented at the Mining Indaba,” says Schneider Electric Africa mining, minerals and metals VP Wilhelm Swart.

Believing the Guinea iron-ore project to potentially offer one of the most significant business opportunities in Africa, he emphasises the importance of knowing and understanding the future acceleration plans for the project. With this potential in mind, Simandou is one of the key projects that Schneider Electric has been tracking in the past few years.

The project aims to provide access to one of the world’s largest untapped, high-grade iron-ore resources in the world. According to Rio Tinto’s website, the project comprises a world-class iron-ore deposit, with estimated reserves of more than 1.8-billion tons grading 65.5% iron and designed to produce 100-million tons a year for more than 40 years.

The project will also comprise a new railway, the Trans-Guinean multi-use and -user railway line, which is 650 km long and links south-east Guinea with the coast along the Southern Growth Corridor, as well as a new deepwater port at Moribaya. This facility will be the first in Guinea to provide access to large cargo ships.

Facilitating Understanding
Having participated in the past four events, Schneider Electric believes that the Mining Indaba has been a key contributor to the company’s substantial growth in mining in Africa in the past year, Swart says.

The company, therefore, aims to gain a better understanding of the areas in which its mining customers are struggling with their conformance to business plans and on which productivity improvements the companies aim to focus in the future.

Swart points out that understanding companies’ key variabilities in business will also be a key concern at the Indaba. “This would be related to the variability in people skills and behaviours, in technology platforms used, as well as the variability related to production output efficiencies and waste produced, as these all affect future sustainability.”

Solution Offering
Schneider Electric will exhibit at the Mining Indaba this year and address any queries that visitors and customers might raise on its latest range of new product offerings. These technologies include latest-generation medium voltage (MV) switchgears, known as the Premset, the Blokset intelligent motor control centre (iMCC) solutions, as well as its new process variable speed drives (VSDs).

The company will also arrange detailed demonstrations and workshops with customers afterwards.

The Premset MV switchgear, which was launched in June last year, is a complete, shielded solid insulation system, making maintenance and operation safer. It also has a significantly reduced footprint, compared with older MV switchgear technology, and is completely protected against environmental impacts, such as pollution, dust, humidity and condensation, Swart says.

“Schneider Electric’s Premset MV switchgear is flexible, simple, modular and smart grid-ready,” he further emphasises, adding that its effective distribution intelligence, with a range of on-board protection relay options, allows for various communication technologies to be used with the switchgear.

Swart believes that Premset is revolutionising the market, based on the number of orders the company received for 2015 and 2016, which are progressing well.

Additionally, the company has received several orders for the Blokset iMCC, including from a ferrochrome miner in South Africa, a copper producer in Zambia and a nickel producer in Botswana.

The Blokset solution employs Ethernet communication technologies to effectively improve the energy consumption of motors. The system is also fully IEC 61439-compliant – a stringent new requirement of mining companies in the market for motor control centres – and IEC 61439-certified for use with alternative vendor technologies.

Meanwhile, the new process VSDs, when integrated with the Blokset iMCC solutions, reduce downtime by about 20%, compared with traditional technologies, thereby significantly reducing maintenance costs, Swart explains.

“The integrated system also offers energy savings of up to 50%, compared with fixed-speed motors.”

Swart emphasises that the company achieved a good order intake in 2015, with some of the larger orders including mobile MV switchgear skids solutions, electrical eHouse solutions and automation for a generation plant in Ghana, as well as various other projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.