Tag Archives: EPCM

BCI Minerals brings in GR Engineering for Mardie potash DFS

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BCI Minerals says it has appointed GR Engineering Services as the lead engineer for the Mardie salt and potash project definitive feasibility study (DFS) on the northwest coast of Western Australia.

As lead DFS engineer, GR Engineering will be responsible for coordination and integration of the process and engineering design packages for the ponds and crystallisers, salt plant, sulphate of potash (SOP) plant and port facilities. It will also prepare and verify the DFS level capital and operating cost estimates and will undertake the design and supervision of pre-final investment decision site works and supporting infrastructure during 2019.

BCI said: “GR Engineering is a reputable Perth-based engineering group with significant experience in study management, engineering design and construction of resource projects in Western Australia and globally, both as engineering, procurement, construction and management and EPC contractor.

“Members of the GR Engineering team nominated for this engagement have appropriate experience in salt operation and sulphate of potash study management.”

Following completion of a prefeasibility study during the June 2018 quarter, BCI commenced the Mardie DFS. As well as improving design accuracy and further de-risking the project, BCI is aiming for the DFS to improve on the PFS development plan and business case in a number of key areas, including:

  • Increasing the production capacity to 4 Mt/y salt and 100,000 t/y SOP;
  • Establishing the tenure, approvals and designs for a fit-for-purpose export facility at the Mardie site, which will eliminate haulage costs to the Cape Preston East Port site, and;
  • Establishing test ponds and completing construction of project support infrastructure to bring forward the target date for first salt and SOP production.

The site works GR Engineering will initially carry out include a 135-ha trial pond, seawater intake pumps, circa-20 km upgrade of access roads, initial accommodation camp and power generation.

BCI’s Managing Director, Alwyn Vorster, said: “We are focused on delivering a high quality DFS that will place BCI in a strong position to reach a final investment decision by the first (March) quarter of 2020. GR Engineering’s technical ability and project management strengths will make them a valuable partner to BCI as Mardie is progressed towards full project construction.”

BCI’s areas of focus in the period to June 30, 2019, include:

  • Appointments of process design engineers (ponds, two plants and port);
  • Geotechnical drilling programme of pond, plant and port areas completed;
  • Construction of small-scale trial evaporators completed;
  • Port tenure negotiations with the Pilbara Port Authority(PPA);
  • Environmental Review Document submitted to the Environmental Protection Authority(EPA);
  • Construction of the 135-ha trial pond and supporting facilities (camp, roads, power, pumps) commenced;
  • Funding discussions with Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and other entities progressed;
  • Product offtake potential developed, and;
  • Significant potential investor/financier briefings.

BCI said all activities until the final investment decision in Q1 2020 – estimated at A$25 million ($17.8 million) – will be funded from BCI’s existing A$36 million cash and the ongoing quarterly royalties from Iron Valley, the company said.

Jacobs to handle underground materials work for Cadia expansion study

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Jacobs has been awarded a contract by Newcrest Mining to provide underground materials handling services as part of the expansion feasibility study at Cadia, one of Australia’s largest gold mining operations.

This contract award builds on Jacobs mining and minerals business’ long history of working with Newcrest across the company’s Cadia Valley operations in New South Wales, Jacobs said.

Jacobs Mining, Minerals and Technology Senior Vice President, Andrew Berryman, said: “During the previous study phase, our mining and minerals experts helped identify a low capital intensity solution as part of an integrated team. By embracing an owners’ mindset and applying our experience in underground mining, materials handling and expansion projects, our integrated approach has the potential to deliver an impressive return on capital for Newcrest.”

The prefeasibility study on an expansion at Cadia envisaged the plant and underground materials handling upgrade costing A$58 million ($41 million). This was part of a bigger A$598 million project to incrementally increase throughput from the base case of 30 Mt/y to 33 Mt/y. Newcrest said that options to further debottleneck to 35 Mt/y would be assessed during the feasibility study.

Knight Piésold and JDS Energy & Mining to work on NRG’s HMN lithium PEA

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NRG Metals has selected global consulting firm Knight Piésold Consulting and engineering, project, and construction management company JDS Energy & Mining to prepare a NI 43-101-compliant preliminary economic assessment (PEA) on its flagship Hombre Muerto Norte (HMN) lithium project, in Salta Province, Argentina.

The HMN project is in the Hombre Muerto Salar, an area of active lithium production. The development strategy for HMN focuses on production of 5,000 t/y of lithium carbonate, with the potential for expansion.

A site visit was completed in December 2018 and the project evaluation and report are progressing in a timely manner, according to NRG. The report is expected to be completed during the March quarter.

NRG recently filed an updated resource estimate for HMN, which identified 571,000 t of lithium carbonate-equivalent at a grade of 0.0756% Li in the combined measured and indicated categories, with a low magnesium to lithium ratio of 2.6:1. This calculation will be used in the PEA.

Bechtel speeds up delivery of Alba’s Potline 6 Expansion in Bahrain

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Aluminium Bahrain BSC (Alba), the Bahrain-based aluminium producer, has successfully produced the first hot metal at its Potline 6 Expansion project.

Potline 6, which is being executed by Bechtel as the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractor, will make Alba the world’s largest aluminium smelter once at full production, Bechtel says.

Adding 540,000 t/y to Alba’s existing 1 Mt/y capacity, this new 1.4 km potline involves the construction of 424 pots in line 6, using Emirates Global Aluminium’s proprietary DX+ Ultra technology.

Paige Wilson, President of Bechtel’s Mining & Metals Global Business Unit, said: “We are very proud of this achievement. The Alba Potline 6 project’s 24-month schedule from Notice to Proceed to first hot metal, or first aluminium, is six months faster than the industry standard.

“This is a world-class achievement for the Kingdom of Bahrain, Alba and Bechtel. This success was only made possible thanks to the very strong collaborative relationship Alba and Bechtel have formed.”

Bechtel was appointed by Alba as the EPCM contractor with the responsibility to design and construct Potline 6 and support industrial services in April 2016 and received NTP in January 2017.

Potline 6 builds on a relationship between Alba and Bechtel that spans more than 25 years. Bechtel also previously served as EPCM contractor for the Line 4 and 5 expansions.

Nordmin to survey European Electric Metals’ Skroska project in Albania

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European Electric Metals has engaged the Nordmin Group of Companies to undertake a site inspection and to comment on the apparent condition of the surface and underground infrastructure and equipment of the Skroska project in Albania.

The site inspection will allow Nordmin to judge whether the existing underground workings and mine equipment can be used if the operations at the Skroska mine are restarted at present capacity of approximately 200 t/d. It will also allow the company to ascertain the requirements for potential expansions.

The Skroska deposit had a ‘historic’ resource of 22.4 Mt of laterite grading 0.99% Ni, 49.13% Fe and 0.065% Co. The laterite deposit is estimated to range from 2 m to 10 m in thickness and to average approximately 6 m thick.

The deposit occurs between the ultramafic rocks below and limestone on top or as a capping. The limestone is a competent rock making it an excellent candidate for use as a natural roof for the open stope underground mining method employed historically at the mine and proposed for the future.

Records indicate around 1.15 Mt of laterite ore was mined during 1985-1990 (by the state-owned mining enterprise) and between 2008-2013 (by a local private company).

The Nordmin Group of Companies is a 100% North American owned and operated provider of comprehensive EPC and EPCM solutions worldwide to industrial sectors spanning resource and project definition through construction and site closure. The group includes Nordmin Engineering, Nordmin Constructors and Nordmin Operators, and is based in Thunder Bay, Ontario with offices in Sudbury, Ontario, Kamloops, British Columbia and Salt Lake City, Utah.

European Electric Metals expects the technical team of Nordmin to be on site in December.

Fluor helps CBG reach major milestone at Guinea bauxite expansion project

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Fluor Corp reports Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) has achieved first ore at its Bauxite Production Expansion project in Kamsar, Guinea, safely, on budget and on schedule.

The project is expanding bauxite production at the mine from 13.5 to 18.5 Mt/y, with Fluor, as the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) services contractor, responsible for the expansion of the mine infrastructure, rail system, port facility and processing plant infrastructure and utilities.

Tony Morgan, President of Fluor’s Mining & Metals business, said: “From developing the local craft workforce to strengthening the economy, this project will have a lasting positive impact on the Kamsar community. Achieving this milestone safely, on budget and on schedule is a testament to the dedication and perseverance of the joint CBG and Fluor team.”

There were more than 1,500 craft workers on site at peak construction. The project team focused on hiring a local workforce, which resulted in Guinean workers representing nearly 75% of the employees on site.

To align the workforce on safe work practices and create a safe work culture at the site, Fluor developed a specialised safety programme. This allowed more than 4 million hours of work to be completed without a lost-time incident.

CBG is jointly owned by the Government of Guinea and the Halco Mining consortium, which includes Alcoa, Rio Tinto and Dadco Investments.

Fluor’s Tony Morgan recently spoke to IM for its annual December issue focus on EPC and EPCM contractors. You can read part of the Q&A here.

Innovation and integration unlocking doors for Fluor’s mining and metals business

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With mining companies looking to replenish spent resources in many commodities, EPC and EPCM contractors’ pipelines are starting to fill up.

IM Editor Dan Gleeson spoke with Tony Morgan, President, Mining and Metals, Fluor, to find out how the contractor is continuing to win business and differentiate its offering from the rest of its peers.

International Mining: How important is securing early-stage involvement in mining projects in terms of eventually winning the major EPC/EPCM contract?

Tony Morgan: It is very important and there are some good reasons for that. If you get a contractor that is used to building significant projects and can apply the right tools in the earlier phase of the project, you will receive an aligned project in terms of the technology used, execution strategy and the techniques, such as modularisation. All of these plans will be built in at the front-end of the project and, when you go into the execution phase, the personnel executing the project will be well-versed in the strategy.

Quellaveco in Peru (pictured), South Flank in Australia, a bauxite mine in Guinea and Peñasquito in Mexico are good examples of projects where we were engaged in the early stages and helped set the projects up for success.

This isn’t to say that if one contractor starts a project, another contractor cannot come in. We have taken over and succeeded in the execution of several projects in this way. This typically occurs when the client deems that the previous contractor will be unable to perform the project’s execution phase because of the project’s size or the contractor has failed to perform in the current phase.

IM: Has the talk from mining companies of more EPC/EPCM contracts being offered with incentives/penalties that effectively share execution risk become a major trend in the industry?

TM: There’s always been a desire to include penalties and incentives in contracts. The extent to which these can be evenly applied really depends on the market, whether contractors are willing to take them on and then the client’s desire to have control over the project.

The best way to execute a project is to allocate the risk to the party that can best control the risk. If you step away from that principle, it can create inequalities in the contract.

Fluor is willing to take incentives and penalties where we have full control of the project, i.e., where we have been engaged from the start, we understand the project and have control over the execution phases. In a lot of our projects, we do that, especially using our engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction model.

In projects where we don’t have full control, there are other contractor arrangements that can be used successfully. For example, we are carrying out a project at the moment where we have an integrated project management team that combines the best personnel from both our client’s team and our team. On this project, there are significant performance incentives at the end of the project.

IM: How has the proliferation of automation, electrification and digitalisation impacted your work as an EPC/EPCM provider?

TM: It’s fair to say nobody – our clients especially – want mines coming into service in the 2020s and beyond that use the technology of 10 to 15 years ago. Automation, electrification and digitalisation are all critical to the success of these future projects.

At Fluor, we are investing a great deal in developing our automation and digitalisation expertise. We are working with IBM on several efforts around predictive analytics. We also have a section of the company focused purely on innovation. We are bringing innovative and automated solutions to projects, including some active and passive sensing technologies used to help safeguard personnel in the field and track equipment and materials.

One of the solutions we have developed is Safety Pin, which allows us to know where every worker is and to notify workers of areas that are not safe to enter.

Innovation is a differentiator for us as we have been adopting various innovations on a number of projects. We know what works and what doesn’t. Others talk about innovation without having applied innovations to large-scale projects.

IM: Where is Fluor seeing most demand for its services on a regional and commodity basis?

TM: We have projects globally, including bauxite and diamond projects in Africa, iron ore projects in Australia and gold projects in Mexico. Copper projects in South America are extremely active right now. We are executing a number of projects in South America – Quellaveco and Spence being two of the largest – and are also engaged on a number of other ones.

This article is part of a larger Q&A to be featured in the December print issue of International Mining