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May 2015
MODERN MINING
35
COMPANIES
Left:
The 3 Mt/a copper
concentrator at the Boseto
mine, located in Botswana’s
‘Kalahari Copperbelt’.
Below:
Seen here (left to
right) are Sedgman’s Danie
Coetzee, Mark Berger, Steve
van Barneveld and Kent
van Twest (photo: Arthur
Tassell).
efficient use of group resources and reduces
unnecessary duplication of skills and facili-
ties, which in turn offers a better commercial
proposition.”
Berger, who was previously with Aurecon
and Aveng E+PC, explains that the focus by
Sedgman South Africa on the ‘Create’ phase
of the development cycle means that it will
primarily be engaged in general business
development, project evaluation, concept and
feasibility studies and front end engineering
design (FEED). “Essentially, our task will be
to identify opportunities in Africa, develop
relationships with clients and carry out the nec-
essary study work on their projects,” he says.
“Once a project is ready to move into the ‘Build’
phase, our global engineering, design and pro-
curement capability will be deployed to take it
through to commissioning and operation.”
Sedgman’s South African office was estab-
lished in 2008 by Steve van Barneveld to
support two key execution contracts in the coal
field that Sedgman had secured in Southern
Africa. One of these was for the 800 t/h Benga
CHPP near Tete in Mozambique while the other
saw Sedgman handling the expansion of the
CHPP at ATCOM East in South Africa. Another
success for Sedgman South Africa was the
award – in 2010 – of the contract to build the
3 Mt/a copper concentrator at Discovery Metals’
Boseto mine in Botswana. Boseto is currently
on care and maintenance but the plant report-
edly performed extremely efficiently during
its roughly 30 months of operation. Last year,
Sedgman also completed the DFS for Cupric
Canyon’s Khoemacau copper mine, which is
located close to Boseto.
Van Barneveld, who is currently based in the
Centurion office, says that one of the competi-
tive edges that Sedgman has is its EPC (‘fixed
price’) contract execution model. “We are able
to work on an EPCM basis if that’s what the cli-
ent wants but we prefer the EPC approach. We
have a strong balance sheet so we can take on
the risk. Moreover we’re confident in our abil-
ity to deliver on time and within budget. Given
the cost over-runs seen on many – probably
most – mining projects in recent years, we’re