Glencore’s Thorncliffe Mine recently hosted a group of United Kingdom based university students as part of their programme to understand hard rock mining in South Africa.

The group of 23 students from Imperial College London, led by Professor Dennis Buchanan, undertook an underground mine visit at the operation, a first for some of the students who were part of the delegation. “Each year I arrange an excursion in May to South Africa for the group MSc Metals and Energy Finance students,” says Prof Buchanan. “In the past this has included a visit to Glencore’s Lion Ferrochromium operations in the itinerary. Given that they are busy with the construction of Phase 2 of their operation we decided to visit the Thorncliffe Mine. This neatly complemented the narrative of an integrated chromite operation with Thorncliffe providing chromitite directly to Lion for ferrochromium production,” he says.

Prof Buchanan says the visit provided an opportunity for the students to enhance their employability in the minerals, coal and petroleum industries and the related finance divisions of investment banks of recent graduates with general science, engineering and finance degrees. “The programme also provides complementary training for professionals with previous industrial experience and is a combined Faculty of Engineering and Business School degree at Imperial College London,” he says. According to Johan Combrink, Glencore Alloys’ General Manager, Eastern Chrome Mines, the visit strengthened the ties that the company has with the University which has conducted similar visits in the past to the Lion Project.

“The visit provided an opportunity to expose the students to Hard Rock mining. It was the first time that some of the students visited an underground operation. We hope that the visit will go a long way in assisting them gain a better understanding of how we conduct mining and also prepare them in their future careers,” he says.

“We all came away with an in-depth appreciation of the level of technical sophistication that lies behind a successful mechanised underground chromitite mining operation. It would seem to me that the Thorncliffe operation is at the cutting edge of the strategically vital transition in the South African mining industry from labour intensive to mechanization extraction of narrow planar ore bodies. The commitment demonstrated by your underground operators to making the process successful was quite uplifting. It was a real privilege for all of us to see them in action,” adds Prof Buchanan.