MINING

EPCM contractor RSV ( Reid Swatman & Voigt ). “ It saves us a lot of money and the teams I manage are so much more positive since there are no shadow roles . Decision making is quicker , team dynamics are better – we do things together and there ’ s no ‘ them and us ’ blame culture .”

Special cases The 40 year old process plant at Palabora has become more costly and inefficient , so it ’ s being replaced . “ We are building a brand new flotation plant with just 14 major float cells ( the current plant has around 78 float cells ), so you already get huge economies of scale on energy , pumps , maintenance and other things . The new plant will be volumtrically more substantial , which means more recovery time and improved recoveries .

We will push recoveries up from around 83 percent to 88 or 89 percent ,” explains Fouché . The plant is under construction by Beijing General Research Institute for Mining and Metallurgy ( BGRIMM ), which is fast becoming a major player in Africa . Another major project he is overseeing is an ore sorter to remove granite content which can linger in the autogenous mills , taking up space that should be filled with ore and reducing throughput But by far the largest upgrade will be the smelter which produces copper rod for the domestic market . It was built to cater for the original open cast operation which produced 80,000 tonnes