Major diamond finds along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in regions like Lüderitz led to the rise of thriving mining communities at the turn of the 20th century. Up until 1994, the largest player in this country was Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM), which at the time was a wholly owned subsidiary of De Beers. In that year a new agreement was concluded with the Republic of Namibia, resulting in the formation of the Namdeb Diamond Corp (jointly owned by the Namibian government and De Beers Centenary). Given the high intrinsic value that diamonds hold, all Namdeb mining operations are governed by strict security protocols concerning how processed diamonds are transported to market. This means that all equipment going into any diamond mining area – whether it’s a dozer, a pick-up truck or an excavator – never comes out again.

Given the scale of Namdeb’s operation (and CDM’s before it), this has meant that a large stockpile of redundant equipment has steadily gathered at Namdeb’s various mining sites. Recently, both for environmental and practical reasons, Namdeb took the decision to clear these waste dumps, with Cape Town based company SA Metal, securing the contract to systematically recycle and process the materials on site prior to their release from these secured areas.

The task of cutting up these redundant machines and other materials is being tackled by two of, mining equipment manufacturer; Cat^®‘s 330DL hydraulic excavators fitted with boom mounted S340 shears, sold and supported by Barloworld Equipment Namibia, the local Caterpillar^® dealer. A Caterpillar Work Tools team flew out from the factory in Holland to help install the shears, as well as to provide training for SA Metal’s operators.

According to SA Metal’s Xavier Fazakerley the contract, which commenced in July 2008, is open-ended and expected to be ongoing for around three years. During this period, SA Metal expects to commercially process around 250,000 t of saleable material.

“This is one of the world’s most corrosive regions and metal items don’t last long in this environment,” explains Fazakerley. “This means that any scrapped metal items prior to the mid-1960s will have in most instances turned to dust long ago.”

The largest sizeable scrap metal source is located at Namdeb’s Uubvlei operation, situated some 10 km north of the Orange River and stretching around one kilometre inland.

“This represents one of the world’s largest scrap metal stockpiles,” says Fazakerley. “In fact the scale of the operation is so big that the footprint of the site is clearly visible from Space – a final resting place for worked out earthmoving machines, commercial vehicles and just about anything else no longer usable. During dumping operations, everything was mixed in together. This means we have to separate metal and non-metal materials in sourcing items such as copper, steel, lead and zinc. Currently we are processing around 5,000 t/month.”

At Uubvlei, SA Metal expects to process around 100,000 t of steel, with the balance sourced from an estimated 15 satellite mines spread over a distance of some 110 km up and down the coastline.