Modern Mining March 2015

MATERIALS HANDLING

Another Rail-Veyor® system in The latest Deebar Rail-Veyor® system to be installed at a South African mine is now operational at a site in North West Province. The systemwill ultimately consist of three trains and will move up to 525 000 tonnes of ore a month over a distance of 2,2 km. It is expected to deliver a 30 % reduction in energy consumption compared to a conven- tional surface conveyor belt.

T he company behind the system is Johannesburg-based Deebar, which was established in the mid- 1970s by Dereck Soekoe, who is the current CEO, and whose two sons, Desmond and Brandon, now assist him in the running of the business. Deebar origi- nally made its name as a supplier of mine shaft signalling systems and this is still its core business although its market offering has now grown to encompass many other products such as station stopping devices, mine com- munication devices and switchgear, starters and Fortress interlocks. The Deebar Rail-Veyor ® is a relatively recent diversification, with Deebar’s involvement in this technology dating back to 2004. The first mine to adopt the system was Harmony Gold’s Phakisa operation near Welkom, which placed an order with Deebar in 2005. The Phakisa installation – which is underground and just over 5 km in length – has now been running since 2007 and has proved very successful. In fact, when Modern Mining visited Phakisa several years ago, a senior Harmony Gold executive, Tom Smith (then responsible for the group’s South African operations although he has since moved on), told the magazine that Harmony was delighted with the system. “In terms of capex, it cost roughly R18 mil- lion to install whereas a conventional rail system, the main alternative we looked at, would have set us back R30 million,” Smith said at the time. “Operating costs are also excel- lent – approximately 30 % less, we estimate, than a rail system on a cost per ton basis.” He added that installation time was also much less with the Deebar Rail-Veyor ® – six months as opposed to about 24 months. Comments Desmond Soekoe: “Phakisa was the first commercial Deebar Rail-Veyor ® application in the world and represented something of a learning curve for Deebar, as the

system was basically conceptual at the time we received the order. A great deal of credit must go to Harmony Gold, which essentially backed an unproven technology. Thankfully the system is now working extremely well – although it was not without its teething problems, which all had to be addressed and rectified.” Deebar has now placed its Rail-Veyor ® busi- ness in a newly established company within the Deebar group, known as Deebar Rail-Veyor ® . The Deebar Rail-Veyor ® contract in North West Province has been carried out on a turn- key basis by Deebar and encompasses the design, manufacture, installation and commis- sioning of the system. In essence, the Deebar Rail-Veyor ® will collect ore from two separate stockpiles and transport it to the stockpile feeding the concentrator. Currently only two trains have been installed but once in full pro- duction three will be needed, with each train consisting of 140 cars, each 2,14 m long. By comparison, the Phakisa Rail-Veyor ® has 296 cars per train. The project includes all track work, an incline structure to accommodate a tipping loop approximately 20 m high to allow the rail cars to tip onto the plant stockpile, and a return loop to get the trains back on track for the load- ing section. The Deebar Rail-Veyor ® was chosen for

32  MODERN MINING  March 2015