Company Announcement - SKF South Africa and Global Mining & Construction SKF Key Account Managers jointly hosted two Life Cycle Management Conferences to provide an opportunity for mining industry executives, directors, managers and engineers to network and share their experiences with other mining industry experts.

The conferences, held on 25 and 30 June 2015 and entitled ‘Mining in Africa – Driving Asset Optimisation’, focused on the Life Cycle Management concept, a proven approach for maximising productivity while minimising total cost of ownership. The conferences were divided into two areas – hard rock and soft rock and the first conference which concentrated mainly on the hard rock mining industry was suitably held in the Rustenburg area, commonly known as South Africa’s Platinum Belt. The second conference took place in the predominately coal mining area of Mpumalanga, focusing here on soft rock applications.

The events concentrated strongly on asset management, LCM and the value-based sales approach. Each conference included real-world case studies delivered by industry leaders from Lincoln Lubrication SA (Jan Backer), Joest (Theresa Walton), Joy Global (Croydon Walters-Gerout), Sasol Mining (Collen Williams), Sibanye Gold (Christo Viljoen) and SKF (Greg Sassen and Keith Meyers). The sessions also included an interactive panel discussion that offered delegates the opportunity to pose questions to the day’s speakers regarding the challenges they faced and the successful solutions they had implemented.

Each conference also included an exhibition area where attendees could learn more about SKF solutions and the featured speakers. A definite highlight during the conference was an in-depth presentation by Dr. Sizwe Phakathi from The Chamber of Mines on the detrimental effect of counterfeiting on mining machinery and the safety of mine workers. The delegates also showed great interest in the compelling talk by Todd Snelgrove, SKF Global Manager – Value, on the recently published white papers on value versus price.

The two conferences were attended by over 80 mining customers and enjoyed representation from more than 40 different mining or OEM related companies. The extremely positive feedback received from delegates at the conclusion of the conferences bears testimony to the success of this initiative in strengthening the relationships between SKF, the OEM customers and the end-user mining operations which will assist SKF in achieving a leadership position within its focused industries and strategic accounts.