Modern Mining August 2019

COVER STORY

pipeline, especially in mining,” says Meijers. “We’re confident that mining will revive – as it always does – but, in the meantime, we’ve launched several new businesses to give us a degree of diversification from traditional markets. We call these new ventures our ‘fledgling businesses’. They’re all housed in one or other of our existing divisions where they will grow and mature. Eventually, when they’ve developed sufficiently, we see them becoming independent entities within ELB Engineering.” As an example of a fledgling business which has already been a spectacular success for ELB Engineering, Meijers cites the case of ELB Construction (ELBCON). Established by ELB Engineering in 2011 as its in-house construction arm, ELBCON is now functioning as an independent con- tractor, servicing not only ELB Engineering’s needs but those of the broader industry. “We created ELBCON to counter what we per- ceived to be a major loss of capability in South Africa’s formal construction industry which was start- ing to impact on ELB Engineering’s ability to deliver projects on time and to the requisite standard,” says Meijers. “It’s been a real winner for us and has revo- lutionised the way we do projects. It’s biggest project to date has been Gamsberg, where it deployed a workforce of around 800 people. ELBCON is now moving out of ELB Engineering’s shadow and start- ing to work for external clients.” Turning to ELB Engineering’s more recently established fledgling businesses, Meijers says they are mostly high-tech in character. “Take, for exam- ple, Novatec SA – this is a 50/50 joint venture we established last year in conjunction with Croatian company, Novatec New Technologies, which is a leader in fields such as PLC software for automation and process management, SCADA interfaces and

 The first concrete pour – for a section of the boiler building raft foundation – in progress at ELB Engineering’s 25 MW Ngodwana Biomass Project.

for Vedanta’s Gamsberg zinc project in the Northern Cape, including a concentrator plant featuring – for the first time in Africa and the first time globally on a zinc project – Staged Flotation Reactor (SFR) technology. In the power field, it has been closely involved now for a period of years with Eskom’s new build programme, in particular the giant Medupi power station. The problem is that work of this type is now scarce. “There are very few greenfield projects in the

The processing plant at the Gamsberg zinc project near Aggeneys in the Northern Cape.

August 2019  MODERN MINING  17