Modern Mining January 2016

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January 2016 MODERN MINING33
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PROJECTS
the sinking of the VUP’s two vertical shafts, with con-
tractor Murray & Roberts Cementation deploying new
shaft-sinking technology developed by its sister company
in Canada.
Turning to copper, the first of the two projects we cover
is Cupric Canyon Capital’s Khoemacau or Zone 5 mine
in Botswana, which will initially support a production
of around 50 000 tonnes of copper and 1,4 Moz of silver
a year, although the size of the resource is such that this
will probably be increased substantially in a further phase
of the project. Cupric Canyon is opting for an under-
ground mining approach, which it anticipates will allow
it to avoid the problems which bedevilled the neighbour-
ing Boseto open-pit operation, developed by Discovery
Metals Limited (DML). With the demise of DML, Cupric
Canyon has acquired most of the assets of Boseto, includ-
ing the 3 Mt/a concentrator, which will be used to treat
the Zone 5 ore.
Back in South Africa, another copper project underway
is the Lift II expansion at Palabora, which will provide
the mine with another two decades of life via the devel-
opment of a new block cave. The R9 billion project will
deliver a 33 500 t/d operation which will replace Lift I,
which produced its first ore in 2001. Lift II will have to deal
with virgin rock temperatures of over 57 deg C. Such is the
ventilation challenge that over 30 ventilation passes have
been planned, with two passes being among the largest in
the industry at 6,1 m diameter and 1 200 m deep – from
the Lift II footprint to surface. The development of Lift II
is involving extensive use of raise boring, with one of the
contractors – Master Drilling – deploying its new 120-ton
RD8 rig on the project.
Our final project is Sasol Mining’s R5,5 billion Shondoni
coal mine near Secunda, which will replace Middelbult.
It forms part of a trio of replacement projects (the others
are Thubelisha and Impumelelo) which between them will
be capable of supplying Sasol’s Synfuels complex with
42 Mt/a of coal.
The Shondoni infrastructure includes a record-breaking
(in terms of length) overland conveyor and a 15 000-ton
capacity surface bunker, which recently received a com-
mendation in the 2015 Fulton Awards of the Concrete
Society of Southern Africa for being “an excellent example
of ‘hybrid’ or ‘composite’ reinforced concrete structures as
the benefits of precast are combined with in-situ concrete.”
In another innovation, the winder house for the new
vertical shaft was lifted into position on top of the head-
gear in one piece with the Koepe winders already installed.
The lifting and mounting of the winder house was a cru-
cial stage in the surface infrastructure development and
required intricate planning due to the high risk implica-
tions associated with this extreme hoist and the level of
accuracy needed to align the winder house onto the exist-
ing headgear. 