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April 2015
MODERN MINING
41
feature
COUNTRY FOCUS –
ZAMBIA
Above:
The sinking
headgear which is due to be
dismantled shortly (photo:
Arthur Tassell).
Top left:
Loading box
installation during
equipping phase.
Top right:
Mini-excavator
working on the 1 231 m
loading station level.
roughly 10 % being expatriates. Obviously we
want to reduce the proportion of expatriates
and we are therefore are putting a great deal of
effort into training. We have set up an e-learn-
ing centre and we also send trainees to our
Bentley Park training facility in South Africa.”
Nefdt says that with Murray & Roberts
Cementation’s Lubambe contract about to
finally finish (the company will be off-site
shortly) and the Synclinorium having only
months to run, the challenge now is to build
up the order book. “This is not an easy task in
the present market but we are currently tender-
ing on projects in the DRC and Ghana,” he says.
Commenting on the Synclinorium contract,
he says that this could rank as the last shaft to be
undertaken by Murray & Roberts Cementation
using conventional, South African-style shaft-
sinking methods. “The Group is moving
towards adoption of the model pioneered by
our Canadian company in which all activities
in the shaft-sinking cycle are undertaken in-
line, with no jobs taking place simultaneously,
which we believe will make for greater safety
and more efficiency,” he explains. “Having
said this, the traditional methods have served
us well on the Synclinorium, which has gen-
erally progressed well after some initial delays
relating to some problems with the civils and
also poor ground conditions for the first 200 m,
which proved tricky to negotiate and which
required extra support.”
The shaft sinking was completed at the end
of September last year, with one of the suc-
cesses along the way being a record 96 m of
sinking and lining during the month of August
2013 and one of the challenges the very wet
conditions, which required up to 24 000 litres
of groundwater a day to be pumped out of the
shaft. Nefdt’s colleague, Wyllie Pearson, who is
Senior Project Manager, also mentions that the
company intersected a 28 m dyke at one point.
“We sank through it without incident, a notable
achievement given that the rock was very hard
and susceptible to scaling. This necessitated
support to within 1 m of the shaft bottom in
order to increase worker safety.”
Innovations in the field of safety on the
Synclinorium contract by Murray & Roberts
Cementation have included the introduction of
a new system to replace the old system of hand