JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s second-largest platinum-mining company, Impala Platinum (Implats), is eliminating what has for long been the scourge of South Africa’s underground mines – fall-of-ground fatalities.

Impala Platinum CEO Terence Goodlace said at the company’s presentation of results on Thursday that, in the 12 months to June 30, Implats had completely wiped out fall-of-ground fatalities.

He singled out the use of overhead nets and bolt systems as a major contributing factor.

Implats total injury frequency rate, a measure of all injuries, improved by 3% in the period – “the best safety performance in our history”, Goodlace added.

Nets and bolts have been implemented on 90% of the Impala Platinum mine’s Merensky reef horizon and in 45% of its upper group two stopes.

All development ends now have safety nets and the company intends providing net-and-bolt protection throughout the mine by the end of the year.

Nets and bolts are already fully implemented at the company’s Marula mine.

Proximity detection systems have been fitted to 79% of the trackless vehicle fleet and these will also be fitted to all underground locomotives.

The proximity detection system detects people in close proximity to mobile machinery and brings the machinery to a halt if people are too close - the machines generating an electromagnetic field that is detected by transponders in miners’ cap lamps.

The entire centralised blasting system is being replaced with the Sasol safeblast system and all conveyor belts are to be replaced with fire-retardant belts.

Quizzed by BNP Paribas Cadiz Securities mining analyst Nic Dinham, Goodlace said that nets and bolts were likely to add R200-million a year to the working costs of the Impala mine in Rustenburg.

Chamber of Mines of South Africa (CoM) safety adviser Sietse van der Woude said both the nets and bolts and proximity detection systems had come out of the chamber’s mining industry occupational safety and health learning hub initiative aimed at encouraging companies to share best practice.

Van der Woude explained to Mining Weekly Online that the nets and bolts provided additional aerial support.

He said the nets and bolts recently saved the life of a Lonmin employee when a rock broke loose above his head and was caught in the nets.

“That rock had the weight of about 50 bags of cement and would have killed the man instantly. Instead the net caught it, and the person is completely unscathed,” Van der Woude recounted.

Although installing the nets and keeping them in place with the use of bolts, was challenging, there was no doubt about the ability of the innovation to save lives.

Last week a proximity detection system also saved the life of an employee at BHP Billiton’s Khutala coal mine.

The employee had passed out in a travel way as a result of a medical condition and a 20 t coal truck coming down the travel way was stopped in its tracks after being deactivated by a device in the worker’s hard hat.

“That was another life saved due to technology being put in place,” Van der Woude said, adding that South Africa was now more advanced than the US and Australia in proximity detection.

Mining Weekly Online reported last year that proximity detection technology that stops shuttle cars in their tracks moving too close to personnel in underground mines, was preventing injuries in Sasol Mining’s coal production areas.

As soon as people are at an unsafe distance from a mobile machine, there is first a warning beep and if they come closer than two metres, the machine automatically applies the braking system and stops dead, preventing people from being run over.

Sasol Mining developed the system in conjunction with US firm Frederick Mining Controls, which is since sold out to Strata Proximity Systems, headed by a former South African now living in America.

Joy Mining is also developing proximity detection systems.

Legislators from the US last year visited South African mines with a view to making the systems compulsory in the US.

Moving machinery has injured many people in underground coal mines.

CoM president Mark Cutifani said at the country's yearly Mining Lekgotla on Tuesday that the 66% safety improvement South African mines had achieved in the last ten years was “truly remarkable” and world leading.

Safety on South Africa’s mines, to date, this year, has been the country’s best safety performance ever.

If the country continues its current safety trend, it could become a global mine safety leader.

The 66% improvement in fatality reduction is considerably greater than the US’s 47% in the same period, and Canada’s 25%.

In achieving its best safety performance, Implats also increased its alcohol breathalyser tests by 190% and its road behaviour test by 59%.

It carried out 3 528 safety work stoppages, an increase of 51%.