Mining equipment and services provider Sandvik Mining South Africa business development and technical GM Bjorn Gohre said at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba that the com- pany received a significant number of enquiries about its equipment offering, owing to increased interest in the mechanisation of local mining operations.

“The need to implement mechanisation in mines is a direct result of the ever-increasing cost of labour and continued labour unrest that have plagued South African mining operations in the last three years,” he told Mining Weekly at the event, which took place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from February 3 to 6.

Gohre highlighted that workers operating in mechanised mines were “far happier than those in nonmechanised mines”, owing to the improved efficacy and safety standards that resulted from appropriately implemented mechanisation at the mines in which they work.

Gohre cited one of Sandvik Mining’s South Africa-based coal mining clients as an example of a mine that had improved the socioeconomic status of their employees owing to mechanisation, as the company employed continuous miners to increase productivity and thus improve safety and the skill levels of the employees who became operators.

“The more productive workforce has enabled the mine to significantly improve the salary of each employee,” he said, adding that workers also lived with their families in their own private homes near the mine, resulting in a significant improvement in the quality of life for the mine’s current personnel, compared with the quality of life of former personnel.

Gohre also told Mining Weekly that Sandvik Mining saw significant growth potential in Africa – the second-largest product sales region for the company after Australia.

The company mostly sells equipment to greenfield and brownfield projects in Africa.

“Although our business growth is occurring predominantly outside of South Africa, Sandvik Mining is still supplying equipment and services to mining operations in the country,” said Gohre.

“We are currently installing a 21-km-long overland conveyor at coal miner Sasol Mining’s Shondoni mine, in Secunda, Mpumalanga, which we hope to complete by the middle of this year,” he added.

In December 2012, Sandvik Mining Systems signed a contract with Sasol Mining, which included the supply of materials handling systems for underground and surface operations at the Shondoni coal mine, as well as the project’s engineering design, procurement and construction.

Sandvik Mining is also undertaking a hard-rock-cutting trial under the auspices of a platinum producer near Rustenburg, and on the western limb of the Bushveld Igneous Complex, in the North West.

“Since the start of the trial, we have cut more than 22 m of hard rock on a continuous basis without having to use explosives,” said Gohre, adding that Sandvik Mining was controlling the dust at the source and, therefore, the process was “a viable continuous mining method”.

“We are working to ensure that the solution is cost effective and that the production rates are achieved as efficiently as possible. We believe this will be achieved in the next five years and that the platinum and gold sectors will evolve, as the coal sector has, into a cutting operation, as opposed to its traditional drill-and-blast setup,” he concluded.