Modern Mining April 2018

TECHNOLOGY

automation

Projects in South Africa that Modern Mining has covered in recent months and which lend themselves to mechanised – and potentially autonomous – mining methods are the Venetia Underground Project of De Beers in north- ern Limpopo Province, the Platreef project of Ivanhoe near Mokopane and the Waterberg project of Platinum Group Metals, north of Mokopane. Further north in Africa, Ivanhoe is devel- oping its Kamoa/Kakula copper project in the DRC which will see highly mechanised under- ground mines being established, while Resolute Mining is on record as saying that its new Syama underground gold mine in Mali – which it describes as a ‘mine of the future’ – will fea- ture a high degree of mechanisation and that it is, moreover, amenable to automation. In Ghana, AngloGold Ashanti is plan- ning the redevelopment, at a projected cost of US$450 to US$500 million, of its Obuasi mine. In a recent announcement on the proposed redevelopment, it said the project “envisages a smaller but skilled workforce that can operate in a mechanised/automated operation with a strong sense of accountability.” Apart from increased productivity, a key benefit of automation is safety. “Obviously, automation takes operators out of the underground work space and puts them in air-conditioned control rooms on surface. With fewer people needed underground, the potential for accidents to occur is substantially

reduced. In addition, the lapses in judgement which can come from operators sitting in the cabs of machines and becoming fatigued are all but eliminated,” says Andrews. He adds that automation also presents

Above: Sandvik’s Auto- Mine™ is a product family that covers all aspects of automation.

April 2018  MODERN MINING  33