JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) − The world’s fourth-largest platinum miner Aquarius on Wednesday released the findings of an independent safety audit, which concluded that its South African operations met, and in some instances, exceeded industry standards.

This comes after the miner bumped heads with the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) last year, after five miners died at its Marikana mine in the North West.

Following the incident, the DMR put out a directive instructing platinum producers operating in South Africa to review their hangingwall support methodologies.

Aquarius started implementing certain changes at all its South African operations in September 2010.

The audit, commissioned by the CitiGroup, and carried out by an independent expert on rock mechanics and international hangingwall support standards, Dr Rimas Pakalnis stated that the new practices implemented by the miner would reduce undue risks to operators and would be effective in the future detection of geological anomalous areas.

The miner implemented modifications of its current mining layouts relative to the structure and sizing of pillars and rooms. Pakalnis said that this would reduce future “catastrophic” incidences of falls of ground.

Certain changes included supportive suspension loading, modifying the orientation of mining structures, instrumentation, warning devices and field observation devices.

“The ground control programme in place by Aquarius meets and in some places exceeds industry standards in terms of identifying the potential failure blocks and thereby supporting the block by ‘suspension loading’ to arrive at ‘zero harm’ conditions,” said Pakalnis.

Other miners affected by the DMR directive included Anglo Platinum, Xstrata and Impala Platinum.
 

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