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April 2016
MODERN MINING
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platinum mining game-changer
Left:
Platreef project
employees on site with the
headgear of Shaft 1 in the
background.
Below:
Looking down the
barrel of Shaft 1 during the
pre-sink stage (photo taken
during night shift).
COVER STORY
rensky. Now compare this with the situation we
have with the Flatreef, where the typical mining
stopes will be 60 m long, 15 m wide and 20 m
high and yield 18 000 m
3
– or 55 000 tonnes –
of ore. Clearly, we can use highly mechanised,
bulk mining methods on a scale never before
seen in underground platinum mining – and
this is precisely what we intend doing.”
The project is located on the Northern Limb
of the Bushveld Complex near Mokopane
in Limpopo Province, with its nearest
neighbor (adjacent to the north) being the
Mogalakwena open-pit operation of Anglo
American Platinum, currently ranked as the
world’s biggest and most profitable plati-
num mine. Commissioned in the early 1990s,
Mogalakwena was the first – and is still the
only – mine exploiting the Platreef. Ivanhoe’s
Platreef mine will be the second and – once it
moves into its second phase of development –
will very likely overtake Mogalakwena in terms