Kumba Iron Ore’s (KIO’s) Sishen South expansion project – being implemented as part of the company’s strategy to grow export iron-ore volumes to 44-million tons by 2013 – is on track to produce its first tonnage in 2012, despite the current global economic squeeze.

CEO Chris Griffith said last week that the project – on which R1,8-billion has been spent to date – was on time and within budget. The company originally contractually committed R3,6-billion to the project.

There had been speculation that the project could be fast-tracked, with the first tonnage being produced before the 2012 target date, but Griffith said this would be difficult to achieve.

“The completion of the expansion project is reliant on rail company Transnet’s ability to deliver a rail link from Saldanha Bay to Sishen South by 2012. “Kumba cannot ask Transnet to fast-track building that link,” said Griffith.

All KIO’s iron-ore in the Western Cape is exported from Saldanha Bay and the company is largely dependent on an effective rail link from the mine to the port.

At the company’s half yearly results presentation, last week, Griffith reported that, during the first half of this year, one death had occurred at the Sishen South project. The project was subsequently shut down for 35 days for the company to launch a full investigation into the incident. Safety performance had, however, shown improvement and Sishen South had achieved one-million lost-time injury-free hours.

The company’s Thabazimbi mine, in Limpopo, has gone seven years without a fatality.

Thabazimbi mine GM Emmy Leeka reported that this was largely attributable to the safety culture that existed at the mine.

“There is a caring atmosphere at the mine, where the staff work for each other and make safety their primary concern above production,” said Leeka.

Griffith added that the culture of safety was “so present” at the mine that even a change of CEO had not influenced the safety performance.

Although Griffith reported that the company is happy with the safety performance of the company, it will not rest until it is able to achieve a fatality-free year across all its operations. This is line with Anglo American’s Zero Harm campaign.

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