Modern Mining November 2017

CONSULTANTS/ PROJECT HOUSES

SENET – an African specialist with world-beating skills If there is a single South African company whose name is inextricably linked with the renaissance of African mining seen over the past 25 (or so) years, it is surely SENET. Founded 28 years ago, the Johannesburg-based engineering company and project house has designed and constructed processing facilities at mines all over Africa, along the way developing a global reputation in fields such as heap leaching and hydrometallurgy. Modern Mining’s Arthur Tassell recently spoke to Darren Naylor, SENET’s New Business Development Director, and Mpho Nkgodi, General Manager Business Development, to learn more about SENET’s history, strategy and current activities.

T he company, which now has around 300 permanent employees, was established in 1989 by Jim Hollywood and Neil Senior, with the early focus being on materials handling. A range of proprietary heap leach stacking and agglomeration equipment was developed in the early 1990s and soon gained a high reputation both in Africa and globally. On the back of this success, SENET quickly evolved from being not just an equipment sup- plier but also the contractor for entire heap leach plants. SENET’s first major installation was a 1,2 Mt/a plant at Cluff’s Ayanfuri gold mine in Ghana in 1994, which ranked as the first heap leach facility to be provided by any South African company, and it was followed by other

installations at several other gold mines in West Africa, including Iduapriem and Teberebie in Ghana, Yatela in Mali and Siguiri in Guinea. The Siguiri project, as it happened, led to SENET transitioning from being a heap leach specialist to a provider of entire pro- cessing plants based on other gold recovery technologies. “Our involvement at Siguiri, an AngloGold Ashanti mine, extended through several phases of development,” says Naylor. “In the final phase, which was implemented between 2003 and 2005, we were appointed as EPCM contractor for a 10,3 Mt/a CIP plant. We were able to design and fabricate this, ship it to site, erect and commission within a 16-month period, a considerable achievement given that it was at that stage probably the biggest plant of its type in Africa. The successful conclusion

The Kipoi SX/EW plant near Lubumbashi in the DRC, one of many successful projects undertaken by SENET in the DRC.

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34  MODERN MINING  November 2017