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November 2016
MODERN MINING
35
CONSULTANTS/
PROJECT HOUSES
feature
A prospect in Limpopo
Province.
in virtually every metal or mineral from gold,
coal, platinum, copper and diamonds at one
end of the spectrum through to tungsten, tan-
talite, vermiculite and rare earths at the other.”
Geographically, the company has worked
throughout the world, including the Americas,
Europe and the Middle East. “We don’t set
ourselves any arbitrary boundaries in terms
of our geographical reach though in practice
we tend to work within our time zone,” notes
Duke. “Being based in Africa, most of our work
comes from the continent and we’ve worked on
projects in most of Africa’s mining areas. In the
past as much as two-thirds of our turnover was
derived from outside of South Africa but more
recently the focus has shifted back to South
Africa.”
The skills that Sound Mining offers cover
exactly what would be expected from a mining
consultancy and encompass both underground
and open-pit operations. They include explo-
ration and conceptual work, designs and
feasibility studies, due diligence reports, CPRs,
valuations and operational planning support to
mines. While there is broad expertise employed
permanently within Sound Mining, the com-
pany also makes use of associates who are
called in on a sub-consultancy basis to supple-
ment in-house skills when necessary.
Explaining Sound Mining’s philosophy,
Duke says that key starting points in evaluat-
ing any project are the orebody itself and the
markets or potential markets for the mineral
resource. “You need to have the best under-
standing of what you cannot change before
concerning yourself with how the resource can
be mined and processed for sale,” he elaborates.
“Moreover, you also need to have a thorough
understanding of the market for your end prod-
uct – where it’s going, who’s buying it, are they
going to continue buying it. All these points
might seem self-evident but it’s surprising how
often they are addressed inadequately.”
He also stresses the importance of metal-
lurgy. “At one point in my career, and like many
other mining engineers, I underrated the impor-
tance of including metallurgists in our mix. No
longer. They are absolutely critical – in a sense,
it’s about packaging whatever you get from the
orebody for the demands of the market.”
Despite Duke’s passion for Sound Mining,
the day-to-day management of the company
is now in the hands of his colleague, Malcolm
Lotriet. Explaining this, Duke says the arrange-
ment has freed him up to devote more of his
time to a relatively new venture – an inde-
pendent Mauritian-based company known
as Project Management and Design Engineers
Limited (PMDE).
“PMDE was founded in 2012 but only now