27 / 60
July 2016
MODERN MINING
25
COAL
several years ever since we acquired the prop-
erty in a mining rights exchange with Xstrata
in 2012,” he states. “We were originally hoping
to get into production by 2014 but the permit-
ting process took longer than anticipated and
the water use licence was only granted in
early 2015. This enabled us to approve mine
development in April last year and by the end
of July the mine had delivered its first coal.
Within three months it ramped up to its target
of 165 kt/month. Wescoal is currently selling
coal to Eskom on short-term contracts and the
parties are in discussions to conclude a long-
term coal supply agreement.”
The new mine – whose neighbours include
Graspan – is exploiting the Nos 4, 3, 2 and 1
seams of the Witbank coalfield, which between
them have a combined thickness of around
12 m of coal, all within 70 m of surface. The
seams are near horizontal in formation and
devoid of geological complexities.
When
Modern Mining
was on site recently
– in the company of Dutch Botes – the opera-
tion was entirely open pit although a small
underground section was in the planning
stages. Following the outsourcing model
Wescoal uses on all its mines, mining is in
the hands of Diesel Power Opencast Mining
which has deployed a mining fleet consisting
of six excavators and a trucking fleet compris-
ing Bell B40 and B50 ADTs and Cat 785 rigid
mining trucks.
A standard roll-over mining method with
rehabilitation on an on-going basis has been
adopted. The total workforce on site totals
roughly 250 people, who are mostly from the
mining contractor. The Wescoal contingent
numbers just five people, headed by Mine
Manager Baat Leonard.
Elandspruit is essentially a pure min-
ing operation as the wash plant that serves
it – known simply as Wescoal Processing –
is located 18 km away. Says Botes: “This is
a fairly new plant that was originally built
around eight years ago for Muhanga Mines. We
purchased it in 2014 for R42,5 million. This is
a very competitive price for a fully operational,
fully permitted facility which – now that we
have de-bottlenecked it and enhanced it in
certain areas – has the capacity to treat up to
200 000 tons of ROM a month. The asphalt-
surfaced road between the mine and the plant
is in excellent condition and we use a trans-
port contractor – SG Coal – to transport the coal
between the mine and the plant.”
The plant – which is operated on behalf
of Wescoal by Pentalin Processing under the
direction of Wescoal’s Processing Manager,
Jaap Kruger – has a multi-product capabil-
ity enabling Wescoal to meet the demands of
Eskom, other domestic consumers and the
export market.
Summing up, Botes says that the combina-
tion of Elandspruit and the processing plant is
operating extremely well. “The emphasis will
now be on introducing initiatives to enhance
operational efficiencies and reduce operational
risk – for example, by optimising and upgrading
water management and the road network sys-
tems at Elandspruit. From a strategic point of
view, we now have in place two key assets that
will provide a platform that assures Wescoal
Mining’s future for many years to come.”
Photos by Arthur Tassell/Wescoal
“Mining is not
complicated. The
fundamentals are
well understood
and our goal is
to perform those
fundamentals
better than
anyone else.”