Tag Archives: Zambia

Enl Electrical focused on timely project deliveries in Africa

Base metals, Equipment maintenance, Mine operation news, Mining services, Power supply for mines, , , , , ,

Enl Electrical, an electrical control and instrumentation specialist (EC&I) contractor, says its work on a large copper mine expansion project, in Zambia, is just one of many contracts it is delivering timely solutions for.

A member of the Zest WEG Group, Enl Electrical works extensively with project houses and directly for mining companies, and is a preferred supplier to many of them, according to the company.

Russell Drake, General Manager Operations at EnI Electrical, said: “Large project implementation is complex, and is often made more challenging by the logistical constraints that many African projects face. There are invariably delays at various stages, which places more pressure on the EC&I contractor, who must in many ways ‘complete’ the roll-out.”

Calvin Fisher, EnI Electrical Overhead Lines Manager, emphasises the importance of on-time completion, combined with reliable electricity supply: “With the various issues that may delay stages of a project, there is usually growing urgency as the deadline date approaches. This is normally when EnI Electrical enters the project, so we are accustomed to working under some extra pressure. Our dynamic team actively looks for ways to advance the work, especially when the previous phases may not be quite ready for us to begin.”

The linking up of electrical infrastructure, connections and equipment is one of the final stages to allow any project to start operating. In this role, EnI Electrical installs a wide range of electrical infrastructure including medium and low voltage cable reticulation, motor control centres, lighting, earthing protection and energy management systems.

Its control and instrumentation work ranges from process instrumentation and plant automation, to custom control stations and fibre or copper networks, it says. The company also designs and installs overhead power lines (up to 161 kV) and substations.

Drake said: “Our permanent bases in countries like Zambia and Ghana – with significant in-country investment in technical assets – underpins the efficiency of our work. We understand our working environment very well, so we can quote accurately and fairly. This is vital to reduce variations during projects, as this can be disruptive to the project and the client.”

ERP system ups inventor accuracy at Weir Minerals Africa’s Kitwe facility

Comminution of minerals, Equipment maintenance, Mineral processing, Mining consumables, Mining equipment, Mining services, Water management, , , , , , , ,

Weir Minerals Africa’s newly upgraded Kitwe facility in Zambia, its hub for central and east Africa, is benefiting from the use of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that has seen inventory accuracy rates rise, according to the company’s Luhann Holtzhausen.

The branch officially opened in early 2018 and boasts a state-of-the-art logistics and supply chain management systems to match those at Weir Minerals Africa’s main distribution hub in Alrode, near Johannesburg, it said.

Luhann Holtzhausen, Weir Minerals Africa Supply Chain Director, said: “Our Kitwe branch now has a 100% location-controlled warehouse that runs off our ERP system with Wi-Fi-enabled scanners in place. This has resulted in the achievement of inventory accuracy rates in the high 90s.

Holtzhausen continued: “The technology and technical capacity in this facility enables us to pick and bin items in real time. This will match any other system that customers may have seen globally and is also a benchmark within Zambia.”

The new warehouse is all under one roof, with high visibility through natural and artificial lighting, where every product is clearly labelled with bin location and barcodes for easy tracking, Weir said. Shelving of up to three metres high keeps all items neatly stacked, easy to identify and quick to retrieve.

“The right goods in the right quantity in the right place means that when a customer asks for an item, we know that we have it and can find it without delays,” Holtzhausen said.

As part of the company’s operation-wide system, the stockholding of the Kitwe warehouse can be viewed in real time by the supply chain management team in Johannesburg. Holtzhausen emphasised the importance of the ERP system’s ability to track trends in customer usage in a systematic and methodical manner, to avoid any stock-outs on mine sites.

Lack of timeous access to spare parts and equipment can be costly in terms of operational downtime, particularly at remote mines that take time to reach, Weir said.

“In addition to the high accuracy of our data on warehouse inventory, our systems also give us end-to-end velocity measurement to monitor the flow of goods from receipt at our warehouses to the actual time of delivery at the customer’s location,” Holtzhausen said.

Weir Minerals Africa has 75 stocking locations across the southern and central African region, and ships nearly 100,000 items each year from its main distribution hub in Alrode.

RCT wins automation retrofit work at Lubambe copper mine in Zambia

Automation, Base metals, IoT, Mine operation news, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, , , , , , ,

Autonomous solutions provider RCT says it has entered into a project to provide autonomous technology to the Lubambe underground copper mine in Zambia.

The deal involves RCT commissioning its ControlMaster® Guidance Automation on three Epiroc ST18 and two Sandvik LH517 LHDs at the mine. These machines will be managed via five automation stations located in tele-cabins.

RCT’s Guidance let’s operators remotely control the machine from a comfortable air-conditioned cabin, according to the company. The system automatically steers the machine to avoid collisions, enabling higher speeds, eliminating damage and improving productivity.

The technology will be installed in June with operator training to occur simultaneously, RCT said.

Lubambe is 80% owned by EMR Capital Resources, with 20% held by ZCCM Investments Holdings. In the nine months to March 31, 2018, the mine produced 14,891 t of contained copper.

MineSense front and centre in bulk ore sorting game

Automation, Base metals, Bulk handling, Comminution of minerals, Environmental, IoT, Metallurgy, Mineral processing, Mining equipment, Mining services, Mining software, Steel and iron ore, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Having just commercialised its bulk ore sorting technology at Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper (HVC) operations in British Columbia, Canada, MineSense is looking to show the wider industry just how effective this pre-concentration process can be.

IM spoke with President and CEO, Jeff More, to find out more about the company’s ShovelSense and BeltSense technologies and how the Vancouver-based startup has been able to secure investment from the likes of ABB, Caterpillar and Mitsubishi.

IM: Can you explain in a little more detail how your ShovelSense and BeltSense solutions work?

JM: The base technology for both is X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) – a technology that has been around for some time. What we have done to this existing technology, which is quite unique, is three things:

  • One, we have extended dramatically the range of XRF. Traditionally XRF would almost have to be held to the surface of a rock to get accurate measurements. The range extension allows us to work in the shovel environment where we are working across metres of volume;
  • Second is speed. Our system is extremely fast. High speed analysis is required on our conveyor belt applications, but this is even more important in the shovel, where we’re measuring dynamically; as the material is flowing into the shovel, to get a representative reading, you have to be able to take very fast readings of the material as it is moving past the sensors;
  • The third is robustness. On a shovel, you are in a nasty environment from a shock and vibration perspective. We developed a system with sensitive components – the XRF itself, as well as the computing devices around it – that can stand up to that very high shock- and vibration-type environment.

IM: The most high-profile examples of the application of your ShovelSense technology have been at copper mines (HVC, in particular); is the detection technology particularly effective in these ores? Is it being trialled elsewhere?

JM: The current sensing we have with the XRF is very effective in a certain section of the periodic table, which nicely covers the major base metals. We’re focused on copper, nickel, zinc and polymetallic versions of those three. The fourth area of focus is iron ore.

We’ve selected copper as our first focus because of the size of the market and the geography. We have done most of our work in copper, but we now also have operating systems in nickel and zinc.

On a lab scale, the technology has been very effective in iron ore, but iron ore is a very different flow sheet, so we have purposely set it as our fourth market in what we call our primary clusters.

We have five mine site customers at the moment – three copper, one zinc-lead and one nickel-polymetallic.

We were very much focused on North America and, in particular, British Columbia for our first pilots and trials as it was quite easy for us to service in our back yard. The first international market was Chile, for obvious reasons in terms of copper production, and we now have a full MineSense entity and team operating in Chile and Peru.

We’re staggering the rest of our global expansion. We’re now quite active from a business development perspective in southern Africa – South Africa, Zambia, DRC – and have activity in Australia.

We have Systems installed at two different copper mines in British Columbia, one at a very large nickel-polymetallic complex in Sudbury, Ontario, and will have a fourth system operating in Alaska. We also have two mines, but four systems, operating in Chile. By the end of Q2, we will have another three systems operating in Chile.

We did all our development work for the system at Teck’s HVC operation and we’re now completely commercial there. We officially commissioned our first system in December, the second system is being commissioned as we speak and the third and fourth will be installed and commissioned in late-March. This will completely equip their fleet.

IM: Teck has previously said the use of ShovelSense has resulted in “a net measurable increase in the amount of ore (and the associated head grade)” it has available to feed its mill at HVC. Are these results in keeping with your expectations for the technology?

JM: Yes, absolutely. We base everything on, what we call, our value model. Very early in our engagement process, we set out a detailed model that calculates the profit improvement that mine will see – we did the same for Teck HVC.

We agreed on a target at HVC and are actually exceeding that estimate. Most importantly, Teck is also seeing that value and is estimating a great overall impact at that mine.

This is an abridged version of a Q&A to be published in the ore sorting feature in the March issue of International Mining.

ERG ties up electricity supply for Frontier copper mine in DRC

Base metals, Energy minerals, Mine operation news, Mining services, Power supply for mines, , , , ,

Eurasian Resources Group has concluded power supply arrangements for its Frontier SA copper mine on the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Zambia border.

The contract was signed by the Société Nationale d’Électricité (SNEL), the national electricity company of the DRC, with power supply of 41 MW to be sourced from ZESCO, the national electricity company of the Republic of Zambia; and Rawbank, a commercial bank in the DRC.

Frontier, a cornerstone asset of ERG’s copper business, comprises an open-pit copper mine and processing facilities to produce copper sulphide concentrate, treating over 10 Mt/y of copper sulphide ore.

ERG also recently signed a supply agreement for Metalkol SA, a major cobalt and copper tailings reprocessing operation and hydro-metallurgical facility to secure its electricity supply for up to 10 years.

Benedikt Sobotka, CEO of Eurasian Resources Group, said: “This new agreement further demonstrates ERG’s commitment to the DRC and Zambia, and further cements our wider strategy on the continent as a whole. We are proud of the strong partnerships we have formed in Central Africa, such as with ZESCO, which is a well-respected and trustworthy power generation source.”

Jean-Bosco Kayombo Kayan, SNEL Director General, said: “We are happy with the current agreement as it guarantees the continuity of the electric power delivery through the arrangements between Frontier, SNEL SA, ZESCO and Rawbank. Eventually we are aiming to supply Frontier from only internal sources in the DRC where existing hydro-electric plants and power lines are currently being rehabilitated.”

Victor Mundende, Managing Director of ZESCO, said: “The signing of this new agreement showcases the growing partnership between ZESCO and ERG as well as a vote of confidence in ZESCO’s ability to provide power to operations at Frontier mine. This is also in line with our vision to be the hub of power trading in the Southern African region. In this regard, we remain committed to providing power supply to Frontier mine to the extent local power sources are unavailable.”