Modern Mining January 2016

Realising possibilities...

PROJECTS

the sinking of the VUP’s two vertical shafts, with con- tractor Murray & Roberts Cementation deploying new shaft-sinking technology developed by its sister company in Canada. Turning to copper, the first of the two projects we cover is Cupric Canyon Capital’s Khoemacau or Zone 5 mine in Botswana, which will initially support a production of around 50 000 tonnes of copper and 1,4 Moz of silver a year, although the size of the resource is such that this will probably be increased substantially in a further phase of the project. Cupric Canyon is opting for an under- ground mining approach, which it anticipates will allow it to avoid the problems which bedevilled the neighbour- ing Boseto open-pit operation, developed by Discovery Metals Limited (DML). With the demise of DML, Cupric Canyon has acquired most of the assets of Boseto, includ- ing the 3 Mt/a concentrator, which will be used to treat the Zone 5 ore. Back in South Africa, another copper project underway is the Lift II expansion at Palabora , which will provide the mine with another two decades of life via the devel- opment of a new block cave. The R9 billion project will deliver a 33 500 t/d operation which will replace Lift I, which produced its first ore in 2001. Lift II will have to deal with virgin rock temperatures of over 57 deg C. Such is the ventilation challenge that over 30 ventilation passes have been planned, with two passes being among the largest in the industry at 6,1 m diameter and 1 200 m deep – from the Lift II footprint to surface. The development of Lift II is involving extensive use of raise boring, with one of the contractors – Master Drilling – deploying its new 120-ton RD8 rig on the project. Our final project is Sasol Mining’s R5,5 billion Shondoni coal mine near Secunda, which will replace Middelbult. It forms part of a trio of replacement projects (the others are Thubelisha and Impumelelo) which between them will be capable of supplying Sasol’s Synfuels complex with 42 Mt/a of coal. The Shondoni infrastructure includes a record-breaking (in terms of length) overland conveyor and a 15 000-ton capacity surface bunker, which recently received a com- mendation in the 2015 Fulton Awards of the Concrete Society of Southern Africa for being “an excellent example of ‘hybrid’ or ‘composite’ reinforced concrete structures as the benefits of precast are combined with in-situ concrete.” In another innovation, the winder house for the new vertical shaft was lifted into position on top of the head- gear in one piece with the Koepe winders already installed. The lifting and mounting of the winder house was a cru- cial stage in the surface infrastructure development and required intricate planning due to the high risk implica- tions associated with this extreme hoist and the level of accuracy needed to align the winder house onto the exist- ing headgear. 

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January 2016  MODERN MINING  33

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