Modern Mining March 2019

DIAMOND MINING MINING C TRACT

shown meteoric growth in countries such as Ghana, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso,” he states. “We’ve already put in several bids in which we came up against some of the established mining contractors operating in West Africa. We were shortlisted for one contract so we know we are competitive.” Williams, who has been at the helm of BRM for less than a year, is no stranger to the mining industry. Born and raised on the Cape Flats, he graduated from UCT with a BSc (Eng) in Chemical Engineering in 1994. His first position was with Anglo American’s Goedehoop colliery where he was a Senior Plant Metallurgist. He subsequently enjoyed a long career with Anglo, working at several of its operations (including the Cleveland potash mine in the UK) with his longest service being at Black Mountain Mining (BMM) at Aggeneys in the Northern Cape. When BMM was acquired by Vedanta in 2011, he was appointed GM and held this posi- tion through to 2014, after which he spent just over a year at Vedanta in India as Associate VP: Mining & Commercial. After this appointment, he left Vedanta, serving first as MD of Aveng subsidiary Duraset and then as GM for Minova Africa. He joined BRM as MD and Executive Director in May last year. “It’s good to be back in pure mining after a break of several years,” he says. “Surface min- ing contracting is a highly competitive business but it’s also an exciting industry. Certainly, I’m looking forward to further cementing and grow- ing Basil Read Mining’s reputation as one of South Africa’s top surface mining contractors and also to taking its operations beyond the Southern African region.” 

nine-year contract and potentially the amount of material to be moved on a monthly basis could exceed a million tonnes,” says Williams. “Our team on site has to contend with rug- ged terrain and extreme weather conditions, including snow, but we thrive on challenges of this type.” Discussing the equipment that BRM uses, Williams says the company has a mixed fleet, comprising Komatsu and Caterpillar when it comes to rigid trucks, Liebherr and Komatsu in the case of large excavators, Hyundai and Volvo for small excavators and Bell and Volvo for ADTs plus other support fleet. “Our biggest trucks are 100-ton capacity Komatsu HD785s and Cat 777s while our biggest excavators are Liebherr R9350s, which are in the 300- tonne class,” he says. He adds that the fleet is extremely well maintained and notes that one of BRM’s subsidiaries, acquired in 2014, is Hytronix, which focuses on assembly, repairs to, and rebuilds of, heavy earthmov- ing equipment. On future prospects for BRM, Williams says that the company is bidding for contracts in the coal sector. “We have been in coal in the past and would like to re-enter this market to reduce our current reliance on hard-rock min- ing. It would also allow us to fully utilise the smaller equipment we have within BRM and B&E, which is ideally suited to coal mining.” Williams also believes that BRM can ben- efit from geographical diversification. “We’ve traditionally been a Southern African player but it’s becoming increasingly clear – and this was a message that was reinforced for me at the recent Mining Indaba in Cape Town – that there are opportunities across Africa, particularly in West Africa where the gold mining industry has

The Tschudi copper operation in northern

Namibia. Basil Read Mining was appointed as mining contractor in 2014 and the contract is still running.

“Our team on site has to contend with rugged terrain and extreme weather conditions, including snow, but we thrive on challenges of this type.”

March 2019  MODERN MINING  41