Iron-, chrome- and manganese-miner Assmang’s Khumani iron-ore expansion project, in the Northern Cape, has achieved one-million lost-time injury-free shifts.

“We do not compromise on safety and, after a regrettable fatal accident on the mine at the begin-
ning of the year, we have worked even harder to ensure that safety is a top priority at the project,” says diversified South African mining company African Rainbow Minerals (Arm) project executive Brian Gilgannon.

Assmang is jointly owned and controlled by Arm and mining holding company Assore. Arm is responsible for the management and technical side of the operations, as well as the company secretariat, while Assore is in charge of product marketing, sales and the provision of technical consulting services.

Arm attributes the safety achievement to an experienced project team that works on site at the brownfield operation. Gilgannon adds that the excellent cooperation between mine supervision and project super-
vision has ensured the safety success of the project.

“We have greatly depended on, and had enormous cooperation from, the mine. We have 
fallen in line with the mine’s health and safety regulations and, as a result, it has been almost a year without a lost-time injury since the start of this phase of the expansion,” he says.

Several interface meetings 
between the project team and the mine have taken place during the course of the project. This, Gilgannon adds, has been an essential aspect of the project as one cannot operate in such a remote environment in isolation.

Gilgannon adds that the project team also had an excellent safety record for the first phase of the project. The company reports that it achieved 118 722 fatality-free working shifts during the first full year of production. The project’s main contractor, project consulting company DRA, previously told Mining Weekly that in the 10,6-million work hours completed on site, there had been only two lost-time injuries, 
amounting to a lost-time injury-
free rate of 0,03. DRA also 
reported that the last 6,6-million work hours had also been lost-time injury free.

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