South African geospatial solutions and aerial survey company Southern Mapping celebrated its tenth anniversary last month, reflecting on its many achievements while outlining its aims for the future.

“Our aim is to remain the leader in the field of aerial surveying and airborne remote sensing and continue offering innovative solutions to our clients,” asserts Southern Mapping CEO Norman Banks.

He says the company’s success is largely attributable to its having established a good record in the industry over the past ten years: “We are fortunate to have a number of loyal clients across a range of industries, including in the mining, infrastructure and agriculture sectors. We also offer a range of products and services that are suitable for clients’ needs.”

He tells Mining Weekly that the company has grown substantially from its humble beginnings. In 2006, it was leasing a single aircraft and operated one light detection and ranging (lidar) sensor. The company currently owns three aircraft and has its own aircraft maintenance and operating team, two airborne thermal cameras and four visible spectrum cameras. Southern Mapping also has three lidar sensors and is operating a hyperspectral sensor.

“Our hyperspectral sensor is the only one of its kind that is permanently based in Africa,” states Banks. He further notes that the company is an agent for hand-held spectrometers and for most of the satellite data providers, including both optical and radar, in Southern Africa.

Moreover, Banks points out that the company does a lot of off-the-shelf dataset provision for clients in the early stages of project development and also undertakes a considerable amount of geological consulting work.

“Our company initially consisted primarily of surveyors. “However, this has been expanded to include geographical information systems geoscientists, geologists, environmentalists and water engineers,” he highlights.

Expanding Footprint
In 2006, when the company was launched, it primarily serviced the local market. However, its customer base has expanded significantly into the rest of Africa, which currently accounts for about 70% of Southern Mapping’s total revenue generation.

The company has also worked in Yemen, France, Germany, South-East Asia and South America.

Banks remarks that Southern Mapping’s primary customer base historically lies in the mining industry, comprising between 40% and 50% of its turnover. At times, the infrastructure sector accounts for the rest of the company’s revenue stream. However, he says the infrastructure sector has taken on increased significance over the past three to five years, owing to the global downturn in the mining sector during this period.

“We have also expanded our offering into the environmental and agriculture sectors over the past five years, which currently comprises a sizeable amount of the company’s revenue,” states Banks.

Nonetheless, he emphasises that mining and infrastructure still account for the bulk of the company’s total income.

Mining Sector Highlights In 2007, a mining company in the Mpumalanga coalfields, which faced a multifaceted challenge regarding on-site hydrocarbon spills and alien vegetation, contracted Southern Mapping.

The company introduced hyperspectral mapping, which the client had never used before. This technology enabled the client to examine signals beyond the visible spectrum into the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, Banks elaborates.

He remarks that the amount of information that can be extracted in the near and shortwave infrared spectrum is “quite phenomenal”, allowing for hydrocarbon spills and alien vegetation, among others, to be easily identified.

“We have subsequently used this hyperspectral technology for the Council for Geoscience (CGS) to help identify asbestos residue,” Banks adds.

The majority of old asbestos mines are located in the Northern Cape. Domestic production of asbestos reached 221 111 t/y in 1983, with about 95% of this production being exported to mostly European and East Asian countries.

South Africa had 249 known (formal and informal) asbestos mines, which posed and continue to present various problems in terms of the types of historical and current exposure to asbestos fibres.

Legislation enacted in 2008 resulted in the banning of asbestos use in all sectors; this was after the last asbestos mine had been closed in 2001. Asbestos mine rehabilitation is entirely funded by government and the current revenue for general mine rehabilitation comes from a yearly budget of R50-million, as set out in the prevailing Medium-Term Budget to 2019.

Southern Mapping completed its aerial surveying work with the CGS on the asbestos site-tracking project towards the end of 2015.

Additionally, the company used hyperspectral technology for a mining company in Tete, Mozambique, in 2013. Southern Mapping conducted vegetation species and change mapping exercises while identifying several military emplacements that had previously been unknown in the area.

Other Projects
Banks points out that the company has been involved in several “memorable” nonmining-related projects. In 2009, it surveyed 244 different sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo for conservation organisation World Wide Fund for Nature to assist in the carbon auditing of the country’s tropical jungle.

In 2013, Southern Mapping assisted a local university’s archaeology department in finding an extension of a Stone Age village in Rustenburg, in the North West, which had not been previously identified, owing to dense terrain, Banks explains.