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March 2017
MODERN MINING
37
feature
MINING CONTRACTING
A fully laden Cat 785C belonging
to Aveng Moolmans at work at the
Nkomati nickel mine.
Aveng Moolmans’ West African operation. He
was appointed MD of Aveng Moolmans in 2012
in succession to Brian Wilmot (who retired
recently) and MD of the combined businesses
in 2015.
Detailing Aveng Mining’s recent successes,
White says the first was the award of a 30-month
contract for the mining of soft and hard over-
burden and coal at South32’s Khutala colliery
in Mpumalanga, which started in early October.
“Hard on the heels of this, we were awarded a
contract by Black Mountain Mining, a subsid-
iary of Vedanta PLC, in December to undertake
the bulk mining at the Gamsberg zinc project
in the Northern Cape,” he says. “Our third
success was registered earlier this year when
Boteti Mining, a subsidiary of Lucara Diamond
Corporation, appointed us to take over as the
mining contractor at the Karowe diamond mine
in Botswana – a mine which has become world
famous due to the large number of large dia-
monds it has produced.”
When
Modern Mining
spoke to White in
early March, both the Gamsberg and Karowe
contracts were starting up. “In the case of
Karowe, we’re ramping up over a two-month
period from one to three teams,” he says. “Both
contracts are of long duration – 44 months in
the case of Gamsberg and 72 months in the case
of Karowe. In terms of the volumes involved,
Gamsberg is the bigger of the two – and big-
ger than Khutala as well – and will require us
to move 50,8 million bank cubic metres over
the term of the contract. We’re deploying some
substantial machines at Gamsberg to achieve
this. The trucks will be 200-ton capacity
Cat 789s while the main excavation tools are
two Cat 6050 face shovels, which are 580-tonne
class machines – the largest in our fleet.”
White adds that the award of Karowe has
ensured that Aveng Moolmans retains an active
presence in Botswana. “We’ve been involved
in Botswana since 2002 when we started min-
ing for Tati Nickel near Francistown and we
remained on this particular site until fairly
recently when the mine ceased operations. We
kept the Tati fleet in Botswana in anticipation
of a further contract award and this has now
transpired. The fleet that was at Tati has been
moved to Karowe. In all, we’ll be deploying 30
Terex TR100 and Komatsu HD785 rigid trucks
and three Cat 6030 face shovels at the mine.”
Traditionally, Aveng Moolmans has derived
about two thirds of its turnover from African
countries outside of South Africa and over the
years has worked throughout the Southern
African region, in Tanzania and in several
West African countries. Currently, however,
the balance has swung back in South Africa’s
favour, which is now the source for about three
quarters of Aveng Moolmans’ revenue. Says
White: “We like to diversify on the basis of
what we term the 5Cs – commodity, currency,
climate, country and client. Broadly speaking,
we are achieving this goal but we would like to
do more outside of South Africa – but of course
one has to follow the work.”
In South Africa itself, Aveng Moolmans is
operating not only at Khutala and Gamsberg but
also at the Sishen iron ore mine, the Kolomela
iron ore mine (where it is responsible for min-
ing the Klipbankfontein pit) and the Tshipi
manganese mine, all in the Northern Cape, and
at the Nkomati JV nickel mine in Mpumalanga.
“The concentration of work in the Northern
Cape is interesting,” observes White. “Ten years
ago we were very exposed to the Mpumalanga
coalfields and took a conscious decision to
reduce this dependence – with the result that
we now have only the one coal contract in
Mpumalanga. This is a market, incidentally,
which attracts a large number of startups –
small companies that have some plant and
perceive coal mining as a low-cost entry point
into contract mining. The result is that pricing
is highly – in some cases, suicidally – com-
petitive. We avoid this space. Having said this,
many of the ‘blue chip’ coal mining companies
look beyond price alone and place a value on
partnering with large, well-resourced contrac-
tors able to handle large volumes and to work
to the highest standards of safety. Obviously,
we’re very comfortable working with coal min-
ing clients of this type.”
Outside of South Africa (and apart from
Karowe), Aveng Moolmans is currently
“We like to
diversify on the
basis of what
we term the 5Cs
– commodity,
currency, climate,
country and
client.”