(Virtual Showroom) VEGA exhibited at Electra Mining Africa, held at the Johannesburg Expo Centre in Nasrec. Alongside its long-standing presence in mining, VEGA is used the event to show visitors the full breadth of what its level and pressure measurement instruments do across the industries that keep Africa running: water, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and oil and gas.

VEGA has spent more than 60 years developing instruments that measure level, pressure, and related process variables in conditions most sensors cannot tolerate: extreme temperatures, high dust loads, corrosive media, and hard-to-reach or hazardous locations such as silos, tanks and tailings facilities.

In African mining, this instrumentation is already at work from the Copperbelt to Madagascar, South Africa's platinum operations, methane gas extraction in Lake Kivu and Lesotho’s diamond mines, monitoring everything from ore stockpiles and process vessels to slurry pipelines and tailings dams.

Measurement, explained

VEGA's stand focussed on the measuring principles behind its products, not just the products themselves. Radar level sensors use microwave signals to determine the distance to a material's surface without touching it, which suits dusty, vapour-filled or agitated environments where contact-based methods struggle. Guided wave radar sends that same signal down a probe into the vessel for precise readings in narrow, turbulent or foam-covered contents.

Hydrostatic sensors measure pressure at the base of a vessel to calculate the level of the liquid above it, while capacitive sensors detect changes in an electrical field caused by the material itself. None of these principles is universally superior; each suits a particular combination of material, vessel shape and environment, and VEGA's specialists work with customers to identify which one fits the application in front of them, rather than defaulting to a single technology.

Measure what matters

An accurate level or pressure reading changes what a plant or mine can do with it. Operators know when to replenish stock, when to adjust a process, and when to schedule maintenance before a failure occurs, rather than after. Increasingly, VEGA's instruments also feed data into remote monitoring and automation systems, which reduces how often personnel need to physically inspect hazardous or hard-to-reach points, such as elevated silos, confined tanks, or the edges of tailings facilities.

For African operations managing sustainability targets alongside safety and output goals, that combination of accurate data and reduced manual inspection has a direct, measurable effect on both. Fewer inspections in hazardous zones mean fewer people exposed to risk, and better data means fewer surprises in the form of unplanned downtime or wasted material.

Outside mining, the same instruments support South Africa's water utilities in tracking pressure across distribution networks to identify leaks and reduce losses in a country where water scarcity is a daily operational concern. They help food and beverage producers maintain hygienic, consistent processes across batches, and support pharmaceutical manufacturers through fermentation, purification, filling and cleaning-in-place cycles where a single inconsistent reading can affect an entire batch. In chemical and petrochemical plants, the same sensors monitor corrosive or hazardous media where the cost of an inaccurate reading is measured in safety incidents, not just lost production.

"Electra Mining gives us the chance to speak with engineers and operators directly about the problem in front of them, not just the sensor," says Miguel Petersen, group marketing manager at VEGA Controls SA and VEGA Instruments. "Once people understand why a particular measuring principle was chosen for their application, the value of getting it right becomes obvious. That conversation matters as much to us as the instrument itself."

The exhibition came as African mines and processing plants continue to invest in automation and remote monitoring, partly to meet safety and sustainability commitments and partly because production economics no longer allow for guesswork. Instruments that once simply reported a number now form part of larger systems that flag problems before they become failures. VEGA's presence at Electra Mining reflected that shift, showing not only the sensors themselves, but how the data they generate is put to use.