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MODERN MINING
December 2016
BULK MATERIALS
HANDLING
feature
T
he biggest of the new contracts is
for the provision of Engineering,
Procurement and Construction
(EPC) services to Black Mountain
Mining (BMM), the Vedanta Zinc
subsidiary which is developing the US$400
million Gamsberg zinc project near Aggeneys
in the Northern Cape. The project involves the
establishment of an open-pit mine at Gams-
berg, as well as a 4 Mt/a zinc concentrator
plant and associated infrastructure, including
bulk water and power supplies. ELB will es-
sentially be responsible for building the con-
centrator and the water and power infrastruc-
ture and anticipates being on site for around
20 months.
Meijers describes the contract as a ‘company
changer’ and says it is the culmination of many
months of hard work by ELB in close collabora-
tion with the BMM/Vedanta team. “Gamsberg
is one of the biggest ‘greenfield’ mining projects
currently underway in Southern Africa and
we’re very excited to be part of it and playing
such a pivotal role,” he says. “We won the con-
tract – which consists of three separate work
packages – in the face of intense competition
and it will certainly rank as one of the biggest
beneficiation engineering projects we’ve ever
undertaken.”
He adds that the process plant will incor-
porate cutting-edge staged flotation reactor
technology from Canada’s Woodgrove
Technologies, a company with whom ELB has a
long-standing co-operation agreement, and that
it will also be assisted in the execution of the
contract by another international partner, ENFI,
one of China’s leading engineering companies
operating in the non-ferrous metals field.
ELB’s participation in Gamsberg will be
through its Engineered Technologies division,
which specialises in the design and construction
of process plants and supporting infrastructure.
“We set up this division several years ago in
order to diversify our service offering and it’s
been a real success,” says Meijers. “So far we’ve
operated mainly in coal, chrome, manganese
A string of new contracts
boosts
Dr Stephen Meijers (right),
CEO of ELB Engineering
Services, with Alistair McKay,
Business Development
Executive: Africa.
ELB Engineering Services (ELB), part of the JSE-listed ELB
Group Limited, has reinforced its reputation as a leading
provider of bulk materials handling and mineral processing
solutions, with a number of recent contract awards which
are collectively worth several billion rand and which
guarantee it a healthy workload for at least the next
two years.
Modern Mining
recently spoke to Dr Stephen
Meijers, CEO of ELB Engineering Services, about the
company’s extraordinary run of success.