MechChem Africa July-August 2023

Weir Minerals invests for a sustainable Africa Rajen Govender, Managing Director of Weir Minerals South Africa, talks about recent innovations at the company’s South African facilities and its efforts to support long-term sustainable growth in sub-Saharan Africa. I n support of the company’s extensive product range for the global mining, minerals processing, power and general industrial sectors of Africa, Weir Min 50 tonnes – we have started to supply globally, mostly to Europe but also in Africa including Nigeria,” Govender says.

Towards sustainable energy use To further the global Weir Minerals’ sus tainability ambitions, the Isando facility has recently invested in a grid-tied solar power plant, which is now installed on the facility’s reinforced roof. “We have been systematically reducing our carbon footprint and are on track to reducing 50% of our total carbon emissions in the region. We have some amazing products that are designed to benefit customers in terms of energy and water efficiency, across our entire range of pumps and other products, such as our HPGRs. But we also believe we should be influencing the green and clean manufacturing agenda,” he explains. “So, every part of our roof is now covered with solar panels, 2 181 of them, each capable of producing 540 kWp of power from the sun. This significantly reduces our dependence on municipal electricity but, more importantly, it reduces our carbon footprint for manufac turing. Since December, the new system has been supplementing the electricity needed for our machine shop, the rubber plant and the foundry areas,” Govender tells MechChem Africa, adding that the system is estimated to be saving more than 1 600 tons of carbon dioxide per year. “While our location near the airport – a national keypoint – means we are less im

erals Africa operates three manufacturing facilities in South Africa: “Here in Isando, we have a foundry for smaller castings of below 1.0 tonne, a machine shop and a rubber shop all operating on a three-shift basis. We also have our Heavy Bay Foundry (HBF) in Port Elizabeth that can handle larger castings of up to 17 t gross, and a pump assembly, screen assembly and rubber plant in Alrode” says Rajen Govender, Managing Director of Weir Minerals South Africa. “We have surplus capacity, across all areas of the facilities, to support market growth and we continuously strive towards lead time reduction to market. The LEAN manufacturing tools we use em power the facilities to reduce waste, improve on-time delivery (OTD) and shorten the lead times to market.” The Alrode site, he continues, also houses our regional warehouse and distribution cen tre and the Linatex rubber facility, which man ufactures rubber linings and mouldings for pumps, mills and made-to-order hose sections and bends. “We have just installed an amazing large screen test bay at this facility so we can test our locally manufactured large vibrating screens. While we have always manufactured a smaller range of vibrating screens, this test ing facility caters for the larger double deck screens – our latest screen’s weight exceeds

pacted by load shedding, the system gives us a sense of security from a business continuity perspective. We will now always have power to keep the facility up and running, excluding the furnaces, of course,” he says, adding that even on the furnaces, some grid-draw reduc tions also accrue due to savings on startup. “The idea is to install systems at all three of our South African plants, and we are al ready looking to prepare the roof at Alrode in preparation for an installation there,” says Govender. “We hope to be able to run the whole Alrode plant off the solar system, because furnaces or other energy intensive processes don’t run there,” he adds. Further supporting its sustainability goals, Weir Minerals Africa has also installed a Replicast plant for manufacturing cast ing moulds at its Isando facility. Replacing conventional wooden patterns and split sand moulds, this technology uses dimen sionally precise ceramic cavity moulds made from expanded polystyrene replicas, Replicast moulding and Industry 4.0 Machining

Weir Minerals has installed solar systems on the roof of the Isando facility, to significantly reduce dependence on municipal electricity and the carbon footprint for manufacturing.

4 ¦ MechChem Africa • July-August 2023