Amplats mechanisation drive in SA to roll out to new mines

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Anglo American Platinum said on Tuesday its mechanisation drive was in full swing and ready to be tried in Twickenham, a mine project it is developing in South Africa as it prepares to shed labour-intensive assets in the country.

The world's largest platinum producer is in the process of selling its labour-intensive mining operations, or listing them as a separate company, as it pivots to mechanisation.

Amplats' chief executive Chris Griffith said in a presentation at the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town that "the trial project we have in place at Bathopele mine currently shows promising results for application at Twickenham."

Amplats' mechanisation nerve-centre is its Bathopele mine west of Johannesburg, where technology has already made human rock drillers obsolete and hydraulic machines do the job.

The technology includes "drill rigs" and "roof bolters" that can squeeze into shallow spaces and have replaced the human rock drillers, whose jackhammers grind into the earth to insert explosives for blasting or safety bolts for roof support.

Amplats has said mechanisation plans have long been in the making. But three years of labour upheaval, including a five-month strike last year, and a political push to make the shafts safer have given the new mining method a sense of urgency.

Griffith said the mining industry as a whole was under-spending on technology research.

"Given the magnitude of our extraction challenges, it is quite extraordinary that the global mining industry currently spends so little on innovation," he said.

"On a revenue-to-revenue basis, the industry spends 80 percent less on technology and innovation compared with the petroleum sector."

South Africa's platinum industry, which is the world's top producer of the white metal used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles, is still recovering from last year's record five-month strike that cut production.