Modern Mining January 2015

MINING INDABA PREVIEW

just a conference and there will be well over 200 companies exhibiting their products and services in the exhibition area of the event. They will include not only mining companies but also suppliers of mining equipment (among them Komatsu, Sandvik, FLSmidth, Bell and Caterpillar), consulting engineers and EPCM contractors (for example, WorleyParsons, DRA, SENET, Sedgman and AMEC Foster Wheeler) and mining, civil and drilling contractors (such as Master Drilling, Murray & Roberts, Major Drilling, Raubex, Aveng Mining and WBHO). The Mining Indaba has been a spectacular success since being established in the 1990s, showing growth in just about every year since then. The new owners have taken over at an unpropitious time but seem confident that this year’s event will measure up to its predeces- sors, saying that it remains “better positioned than ever to deliver an unparalleled deal-mak- ing and discovery platform for global investors and mining companies.” The list of speakers and exhibitors suggests that this confidence is well founded and that this year’s Mining Indaba will be highly successful, reaffirming its status as the world’s third largest mining conference and Africa’s largest mining event. 

three prime projects in the Southern African region – the Platreef mine near Mokopane, the Kamoa copper project near Kolwezi in Katanga in the DRC and the redevelopment of the historic Kipushi copper-zinc mine, also in Katanga. Friedland has presented on these projects at previous Mining Indabas but he is a gifted speaker who talks up the projects in a most engaging way and who is bound to pull a huge audience. The Platreef project, incidentally, has received some bad over- seas press recently, leading Ivanhoe to accuse the publication concerned of “false allega- tions and misrepresentations, and gratuitous exaggerations”. The opening address at the Mining Indaba is due to given by South Africa’s Minister of Mineral Resources, Ngoako Ramatlhodi. Only appointed to his current position in May last year, one of his tasks at the Mining Indaba will be to reassure delegates that South Africa’s min- ing industry still represents a good investment opportunity, notwithstanding the fractious labour relations that characterise it and the problems presented by Eskom’s generating capacity shortfall. The Mining Indaba, of course, is more than

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