Safer production in mining can be achieved by “integrating into one’s business” and “living” one’s environmental, health and safety (EHS) management policy, says mining equipment and services provider Sandvik Mining sales and marketing manager Bjorn Gohre.
Speaking at the Safety, Skills and Sustainabi- lity in Mining conference, held in Johannesburg, last month, he said that the company’s 24 EHS standards, which specify the performance requirements of its staff, were continually being improved through managing its safety objectives and honing preventive actions.
Through this stringent adherence to the EHS policy and its implementation, Sandvik Mining had been able to reduce the lost-time injury-free rate of its staff, contract workers and temporary workers at its operations from five in 2010 to 1.1 for every one-million hours worked in 2013.
What was also important for the entire Sandvik group was to manufacture products in which safety was fully integrated, which started with equipment design. “We do not believe in adding or retrofitting safety systems on equipment, as it will affect our productivity while doing so. The functional safety of the equipment is decided before the design stage of a product, enabling us to design and manufacture a fit-for-purpose piece of equipment for different mining sites worldwide from the start,” he explained.
Meanwhille, Sandvik Mining had identified the current conventional narrow-reef mining methods as an issue in the Southern African mining industry. “The Southern African mining industry has reached a stage where there is pressure on the subcontinent to change the way in which it mines narrow reefs, owing to the danger that this mining method presents to workers,” highlighted Gohre.
“Although fatality rates have been steadily decreasing throughout the mining industry on the subcontinent in the past two decades and are now flattening out, our company believes that a paradigm shift is still necessary to bring this rate down even further.”
In terms of productivity, these levels had been stable for several years, but had recently started to decline. Gohre said the recently declining productivity levels were exacerbated by the impact of HIV/Aids, extended mine induction programmes, statutory stoppages and increasing temperatures that come with mining at increasing depths.
He therefore pointed out the need to develop appropriate technology and mining methods that would promote safe and cost-effective narrow-reef mining.
Sandvik Mining believes that the mining sector needs to move to mechanised mining to mine narrow reefs effectively, as opposed to continuing with conventional mining.
“This can be realised by imparting greater skills to a smaller workforce with better wages and an improved working environment, unlike conventional mining, where a large and mostly unskilled workforce is working in unfavourable environments.”
Gohre said that, since the Sandvik group’s implementation of its DD210L face drill in 1999, a mechanised mining machine used for narrow-reef mining, narrow-reef hard-rock chrome and platinum mines employing mechanised mining methods were currently the lowest-cost mining operations of their kind.
He said he was confident that the hard-rock narrow-reef mining industry had learnt how to change substantially, but still had to embrace the idea of cultivating partnerships with all the relevant stakeholders.
Further, while narrow-reef mining operations had been successfully mechanised, the industry should focus on developing nonexplosive mining methods, reducing ore dilution and increasing rates of tunnel development for all mining operations.