Modern Mining November 2015

COAL

“running like a dream” of this writing) has never suffered a fatality. Vanggatfontein operates to an outsourced model and Liviero is one of four main contrac- tors at the mine. The others are Minopex, which operates the two plants, Fraser Alexander, responsible for discard management, and Eqstra Logistics, which handles the transport of the coal.

The product from the 2-Seam and 4-Seam which is supplied to Eskom is a 21,5 MJ ther- mal coal while the 5-Seam product for the metallurgical market is a 28,5 MJ low contami- nant, vitrinite dominant bituminous coal. The 5-Seam – absent on many mines in the Witbank coalfield – is a thin inconsistent seam but since start-up the product has been a valuable sup- plement to Vanggatfontein’s revenue stream. Developments at Vanggatfontein over the past year have included the opening of Pit 4 to create further mining flexibility and the com- missioning at the end of June this year – on schedule and within budget – of a R41,1 mil- lion filter press plant. The plant is designed to reduce the moisture content of the slurry from the two wash plants to produce a handle-able filter cake product and dramatically improve water recovery from the tailings streams. It also eliminates the need for a new co-disposal facility. Early last year Keaton completed its acquisi- tion of Australia’s Xceed Resources, the target of the transaction being the Moabsvelden prop- erty, located just 3,5 km from Vanggatfontein. Keaton said at the time that Moabsvelden represented a significant opportunity to grow its Delmas footprint by developing a satellite pit operation on the property with all coal

4-Seam loading operations in the VG3 (Vanggatfontein 3) pit.

November 2015  MODERN MINING  23