Modern Quarrying January-February 2015

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January - February 2015 MODERN QUARRYING 7
AROUND THE INDUSTRY
Untitled-1 1 2014/02/05 7:44 PM
New Lafarge Aggregates
GM
Pr aveen Bechoo,
wh o s e a p p o i n t -
ment commenced
on October 1, 2014,
i s b a s ed a t t h e
Lafarge head office
in Longmeadow. He
is also a member of the country executive.
Bechoo holds degrees in BSc Mechanical
Engineering, Bachelor of Commerce and a
Masters in Business Administration.
Prior to joining Lafarge, he occupied
various senior management roles with
companies including Eskom, Holcim and
M-Web Commerce Zone. His recent posi-
tion was Business Unit CEO at Macsteel
Coil Processing and Macsteel Special Steels,
where he spent 13 years.
Bechoo has replaced Jacques Schutte,
who has been overseeing the Aggregates
product line for the past nine months.
Schutte has returned to his position as strat-
egy and business development manager.
Miners, ministers and
other mining industry
players are gather-
ing at the Cape
Town A f r i c an
Mining Indaba
in February,
under a cloud
of low com-
modity prices, rising mining costs and
falling productivity – a risky environment
that requires higher levels of technical
certainty, according to SRK Consulting.
“Tough economic conditions are
making it harder to fund new mines
to even sustain existing conditions, so
explorers, developers and operators
must ensure that the risk factors are
well understood and mitigated,” says
SRK chairman and corporate consultant,
Roger Dixon (above ). “As margins for
proposed mining projects are squeezed
between softer prices and higher costs,
there is less room to deal with project
risk. The key to success is to properly
Know your project’s risks
address the various ‘modifying factors’
that stand between a prospective deposit
and a viable mine.”
With a 40-year reputation built ini-
tially on geotechnical engineering, SRK
Consulting has grown into a global net-
work of engineering consultants with
in-house expertise ranging from explo-
ration, mining and infrastructure engi-
neering to water, tailings, and social and
environmental impact assessment.
“Integrating the various technical
disciplines is the only way to fully under-
stand project risk,” Dixon says.
“Open-pit economics, for example, are
heavily dependent on the pit slope angle.
To optimise this angle, a detailed knowl-
edge of the structural geology is required,
as well as rock characteristics and ground-
water behaviour.”
“The three areas of knowledge can
then be integrated into the preliminary
mine design, and pit optimisation runs
can be completed with confidence.”