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MODERN MINING
January 2017
Top projects
GRAPHITE
The primary mill looking
south.
The TSF with welding of the
liner seams in progress.
the Ncala coal terminal and the upgrade of the
Beira coal terminal.
Overseeing Syrah’s activities at Balama is
the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Darrin
Strange. A metallurgist with a background with
Rio Tinto (he was previously GM of Rio’s West
Angelas and Robe Valley iron ore operations
in Australia’s Pilbara), he speaks Portuguese
and spends a major part of his time on site in
Mozambique.
Talking to
Modern Mining
recently, he
said Balama would employ traditional open-
pit bench mining methods, with the mining
operation projected to be 100 % free dig
for the first five years. “The load and haul
fleet, which has now been mobilised to site,
includes a 90-t Liebherr excavator, Bell B40
articulated dump trucks, several Caterpillar
dozers and graders and a couple of fuel tank-
ers,” he said. “We will eventually mine in two
pits, with the West Pit – which will be mined
first – ultimately being 1 000 m long, 400 m
wide and 80 m deep and the East Pit 1 000 m
long, 1 000 m wide and 80 m deep. The strip
ratio is very favourable and is estimated at
0,04 over the life of mine. Construction of
the ROM pad – which will have a capacity of
360 000 tonnes – is underway with comple-
tion expected in February 2017.”
Strange added that training of 20 mobile
plant operators had started and that it was
the intention that the mining operation would
eventually be manned by workers drawn
mainly from local communities.
Turning to the processing route at Balama,
this will be a conventional process including
crushing, grinding, flotation, filtration, drying,
screening and bagging. The plant, which will
have a capacity of 2 Mt/a, has been designed
by CPC Engineering located in Perth, Western
Australia.
“Primary crushing is by means of a sizer