Modern Mining January 2018

COVER STORY

be a credible player, both in South Africa and the rest of the continent. “We’re particularly pleased with the progress we’re making in Zambia, where we’re supplying the explosives to some of the biggest copper mines in Africa, and in West Africa, where we have a good con- centration of business, which is reflected in the fact that we now have eight emulsion plants in the region,” Keenan says. “Our latest suc- cess is B2Gold’s Fekola open-pit mine in Mali, which has just recently been commissioned and which is on its way to being one of West Africa’s biggest gold mines.” BME has a full-service contract at Fekola encompassing both the supply of explosives and the blasting. It has established an emulsion plant with a capacity of 3 000 tonnes/month at the mine site and has also deployed four 20-tonne emulsion trucks, as well as a stem- ming truck. Blasting will be undertaken using the AXXIS system. Apart from Mali, BME is active in several other countries in the West Africa region, including Guinea, Burkina Faso and Mauritania and sees considerable potential in Côte d’Ivoire, where the gold mining industry is showing good growth. On the subject of AXXIS, Keenan says that the product is doing very well with sales hav- ing doubled in the last year. “We see AXXIS as being central to our continuing geographi- cal diversification into overseas markets, which we regard as essential to the future of the company. We already have a joint venture in Australia that manufactures and markets the electronic detonators, which has proved very successful, and we’ve recently taken our first steps into the US market, where six very successful test blasts have recently been con- ducted using AXXIS. The American blasting experts who participated in the tests were very impressed by the system.” He adds that one of the tests was close to a hospital in downtown Atlanta, Georgia and demonstrated the system’s ability to minimise vibration levels and fly rock. All the blasts, in fact, which also included a housing develop- ment site and a road-widening project, were performed within the legal vibration limits set by the authorities. Closer to home, the AXXIS system was employed in September 2017 in a record- breaking blast at the Kansanshi mine in Zambia. The blast involved 6 690 electronic delay detonators (the most ever used in a sin- gle blast anywhere in the world), consumed 400 tonnes of emulsion explosives and moved approximately 455 000 bank cubic metres of

material. All the holes were single primed, with a set-up that included nine different shots, 18 slave blasting boxes and one master box. Interestingly, the operation was under- taken ‘in house’ by the mine’s own personnel, underscoring BME’s claim that the AXXIS sys- tem is extremely user friendly. BME is currently working hard on the next generation of AXXIS and expects to commer- cialise it later this year. According to Keenan, it has some very high-tech features – which he describes as “4th industrial revolution technol- ogy”– and will represent a step change in blast optimisation. Finally, and looking at prospects for BME, Keenan says the company is expecting pric- ing pressure to continue and also has concerns over the proposed new Mining Charter, which could inhibit growth and investment in South Africa’s mining sector. “Having said this, we’re generally positive about 2018. We have seen some improvement in commodity prices in recent months and we believe this momentum will be maintained in the year ahead.” Photos courtesy of BME

BME’s suite of products and systems for underground

mining includes a new underground mobile pumping system for narrow reef mining.

January 2018  MODERN MINING  23