Vancouver-based Platinum Group Metals (PTM) plans to take a more “North American” approach to the rates of advance in the declines at its Western Bushveld Joint Venture (WBJV) platinum project, president and CEO Michael Jones said on Tuesday.

PTM is the operator of the planned 250 000 oz/y project, which it owns in partnership with the world's biggest producer of the white metal, Anglo Platinum and black-empowered Wesizwe Platinum.

The company is working on optimisations to its bankable feasibility study (BFS) for the project, the first of three envisaged for the WBJV property, and expects the final study to contain “a lot of changes” from the prefeasibility design, Jones said.

This was partly to reduce power consumption, in response to concerns over State-power utility Eskom's ability to supply electricity, and partly to reduce capital costs.

Miners around the world are battling rising costs for equipment and labour, as they scramble to bring new mines into production to take advantage of record metals prices.

PTM is finalising engineering changes to the BFS, aimed at accessing shallow resources more quickly and earlier in the project's development.

"We think we can really change this design quite a bit by accessing more North American rates of advance in declines and using some of the experience of our people in getting declines in from surface faster."

While the prefeasibility study envisaged the sinking of twin vertical shafts, the company now expected to eliminate one of the verticals, while expanding the use of declines into the shallow material contained in the deposit, “which also has the advantage of cutting out vertical hoisting and power requirements”, Jones said.

The BFS is expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year, and first production is scheduled for 2010.

'NEW METRIC IN THE MINING BUSINESS'

Jones echoed comments made by gold giant Barrick Gold's COO, Peter Kinver, that it was not only South Africa where mining companies were faced with difficulty in securing power to run their operations.

He suggested that the issue of “megawatts per ounce” was becoming “a new metric in the mining business”.

“Normally in the mining business we talk about ounces being tons, grade and depth ...and now there's megawatts. You can add that to the list.”

As ounces contained in shallow, higher-grade ore required the least power for extraction, the 'megawatt' factor made them even more attractive than before.

“And that's going to become an increasing factor...it's an interesting way to think about the business,” Jones said.

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