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THE PARTNERSHIP JUST GOT SMARTER - [August 2006]
Assmang Limited (Assmang) pins much of the future success of its new Khumani Iron Ore Mine in the Northern Cape Province on long term partnerships that bring cost efficient, productive solutions to the venture.
Pictured with one of the first Cat 789C off-highway trucks delivered for the greenfields Khumani Iron Ore Mine (BKM Project) are (from left): Bouwer Fouche, Barloworld Equipment technical rep; Peter Tapson, Barloworld Equipment Northern Cape operations manager; Willem Grobbelaar, iron ore business leader at Assmang with operational responsibility for Khumani mine; Fanie Burger, Assmang’s engineer at Beeshoek; and Eddie van Jaarsveld, Barloworld Equipment customer service rep.
The project was initially referred to as the BKM Project after the Bruce, King and Mokaning farms on which it is located. According to Willem Grobbelaar, Iron Ore Business Leader and former GM of Assmang’s Beeshoek iron ore mine further to the south, one of the first partnerships to be established was between the mine and the local branch of the San tribe for whom the mine has been renamed.
Khumani means “people of the southern Kalahari”, a sub-tribe of the San people. The name was chosen in honour of the ancient San miners who mined specularite (a variety of hematite, which contains iron ore) in the same area and sold across the continent for cosmetic purposes. A relationship has already developed between the new mine and the local San community, with agreement reached on the name and on how both can work together for mutual benefit.
Talking to Assmang, it soon becomes evident that there are certain priorities that stand head and shoulders above all others in this multi-billion rand project. These priorities, in addition to partnerships, are training, safety, forward thinking and learning from the past.
All of these factors came to the fore when Assmang made the decision to partner with Barloworld Equipment in a contract worth around R90-million for mining equipment and further agreements for mining technology and Cat oils. The selection, according to Freddie Human, Assmang’s project manager for Khumani mine, was both a strategic and an engineering one.
Mining machines
Barloworld will supply all mining equipment for Phase 1, including initial deliveries of three Cat 789C off-highway trucks, a top of the range Cat 994F wheel loader and two Atlas Copco Pit Viper 271 surface rotary drills. Another two 789Cs will be delivered in 2007 and 2008, a second 994F in 2008, and Cat support equipment including two D10T dozers, a 16H grader, a 385C excavator and an 834H wheel dozer will arrive on site next year. The first three Cat 789C trucks and the first Cat 994F will work at Beeshoek pending start-up of earthmoving at Khumani next year.
The Cat mining fleet selected by Assmang, including five Cat 789C haulers, will enable Khumani to extract the 8,4-m tons of iron ore annually earmarked for phase 1.
This mining fleet will enable Khumani to produce the 8,4-m tons of iron ore annually earmarked for phase 1 from 2008. Decisions regarding the composition and nature of the fleet were critical to Khumani’s plan to produce 8,4-m tons of product within a 6 000-hour year in Phase 1. The significance of this becomes clear when compared with Beeshoek, where 5 600 hours per year are yielding 6,3-m tons of iron ore.
Mining will initially take place on Bruce Farm, with Phase 2 on King farm expected to increase output to 16-m tons a year. This level of production will only become a reality around 2013/2014 (subject to the successful negotiation of additional export logistic capacity through Saldanha Bay) and will require a separate fleet due to its location some distance from Phase 1. Human says he regards the relationship between Assmang and Barloworld Equipment as a marriage that will require hard work but is likely to endure through the total development of the mine. So the indications are that Phase 2 will also be a Cat site.
The technology component of the Khumani partnership is particularly exciting for Barloworld Equipment as it gives the company a fully integrated reference site from day one of mining. The technology products will include Caterpillar’s Minestar management system for the total earthmoving fleet and Aquila drilling management for the drill rigs.
Mining and maintenance of mining equipment will be carried out by the mine itself and Grobbelaar has agreed to use only Cat oils in the mining fleet.
Solid partnership
Barloworld Equipment has supplied equipment to Assmang at Beeshoek for about 12 years in what Grobbelaar calls a “solid partnership”. The success of this relationship has been a crucial factor in the Khumani equipment decision. Freddie Human says there were also other elements to the decision. “At feasibility stage we needed input from potential suppliers and Barloworld Equipment was forthcoming with all the information we needed,” he says.
“At Beeshoek, where we employ several contract miners, we have a first hand opportunity to compare different machines at the workface. This is an exceptionally harsh and abrasive mining environment, so it is crucial to use the most hardy machines and to support them with excellent condition monitoring and training.”
Other contributing factors were the availability of the Cat machines required to meet start-up times and the fact that simulator training modules on Cat machines was the most comprehensive available.
“The machines sell themselves,” says Grobbelaar. “Caterpillar has been the tried and tested manufacturer out there for close on 100 years. The fact that our service team and operators at Beeshoek, many of whom will eventually transfer to Khumani, are trained on a Cat fleet is also important. Barloworld Equipment’s presence with a depot in Kuruman to back us up with parts, technical support and training, is the third factor that played a major role for me.”
The selection of Atlas Copco’s Pit Viper was based on its compliance with the drilling requirements of this site, together with visits to various mines to see the drills in action.
The decision by Grobbelaar and his team to use only Cat oils both at Beeshoek and the new mine is in line with what Barloworld Equipment Kuruman Manager Peter Tapson refers to as an exceptional maintenance record at Beeshoek. “Cat oil is specified for Cat machines and using it gives us added muscle when it comes to performance guarantees,” explains Grobbelaar.
Before failure repairs
The technology component of the agreement between Assmang and Barloworld is unique in South African mining. As owner operator at Khumani, Assmang opted for the most cost efficient and productive solution. According to Human, this meant using technology to provide all the information needed to manage the fleet cost efficiently and to ensure before failure repairs and maximum uptime.
“The decision was to plan for the future and not to run the equipment into the ground as many South African mines have done in the past,” says Human. “We are of the firm belief that managed maintenance improves production and saves cost in the longer term.”
Grobbelaar agrees that the implementation of mine scheduling technology will drive down cost. Technology is already at work at Beeshoek in the form of simulator modules valued at R6-million from Australian supplier Immersive Technologies to train operators for the Cat 994 and 789 load and haul combination at Khumani. Human says experience has shown that productivity increases by up to 30 per cent using properly trained operators and also has plans to take Khumani’s operators to other Barloworld Equipment sites for hands-on training.
Barloworld’s Operator Academy, the only facility of its kind to offer operator training that is accredited nationally by the Construction Education and Training Authority (CETA), will also play a role in getting operators at Khumani up to speed now and in the future.
The major technologies to be applied and supported by Barloworld Equipment’s Mining Technologies division include Caterpillar’s Aquila drill monitoring and navigation system on the Pit Vipers and Minestar real time fleet management system on the other mining machines.
Using an Advanced Monitoring Platform and GPS technology, the Aquila system virtually eliminates traditional surveying, staking and human error. It incorporates a material recognition system designed to measure rock hardness, from which it determines hole geology while drilling and pinpoints the location of ore and waste interfaces.
The drill operator using Aquila knows exactly what and where he is drilling and at the same time the mine receives comprehensive real time production information. Machine monitoring systems track hole depth, penetration rates and drill utilisation, making for optimal drilling performance.
The full Caterpillar MineStar suite of integrated mining information systems will be employed on Khumani’s mining fleet in a first for a South African mine. The suite includes MineStar Fleet Commander, MineStar Machine Health, MineStar Infrastructure, MineStar Machine tracking, MineStar Office and MineStar Production.
Khumani’s management now has the difficult task of ramping up Khumani and ramping down Beeshoek without losing vital skills and, on the other hand, acquiring many new skills along the way. Two factors are likely to contribute to the success of this exercise, the high level of skills development that has proved so successful at Beeshoek and the strong relationship that is already being forged with the local community at Khumani.
KHUMANI MINE MANAGEMENT
During the development phase, the hands-on management of Khumani Iron Ore Mine is made up of two teams: a technical team responsible for building and commissioning; and an operational team to set up systems to run the mine, establish human resources and training departments and allied activities. Freddie Human heads up the technical team reporting to Willem Grobbelaar, who also heads up the operational team.
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