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On-The-Air (07/11/2014)

On-The-Air (07/11/2014)

safm7nov2014

7th November 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: New technology has slashed the use of electricity at Glencore’s giant chrome beneficiation plant.

Creamer: This is very good news where you get a plant using a lot of electricity cutting it by 37%. Now, cutting consumption by 37% in a big plant like that means that you are really saving a power station.

You are saving about two units at Medupi. This is something we must be reminded about now, we can carry on beneficiating our chrome, turning it into ferrochrome, a much higher value and we can do it within that allocation of electricity because we’ve cut back. Then the country benefits because we continue that high value exports, get that foreign exchange in that we need and we use less electricity, which is the answer to the maiden’s prayer at the moment.

So, the Premus technology being used out at Glencore’s Lion operation ferrochrome plant is a reminder to South Africa that there are ways and means of cutting back on the use of technology, which almost means that you get the equivalent of a power station unit coming free. I think it should be something that we focus our intention on because we do need these big plants to continue to produce, but we get the huge benefit if they cut back on power.

Kamwendo: New technology will next year unlock a ton of gold that cannot be mined conventionally.

Creamer: We have got that march ahead by AngloGold Ashanti not stopping. There is always a progress report and now they are talking about 2015 that they will be able to recover a ton of gold that would have been left in the ground have we not had this new technology. The new technology can move into these areas that are unmineable using conventional technology now. We see that they will be mining the shaft pillar.

We know that we have to leave these big pillars behind for safety reasons, but with this technology they can extract this gold out of there, and it’s rich gold, without Mother Nature knowing because they replace the material which is hard as the rock as they mine. This is again a reminder of how much gold we can recover if we deploy this new technology and how much gold we can lose if we don’t.

If we don't move into this new era, we will leave behind something like 1,1-billion ounces of this base underground never to be mined, never to be recovered. That sort of value South Africans can not ignore, because of the fact that we need to build our economy on this short of activity.

Kamwendo: Sounds fascinating and I will give anything right now to see how this is actually done.

New technology is recovering gold from process waste that normally ends up on the trash heap.

Creamer: There is a company now going out and picking up all the waste that we normally just used to discard, the woodchips, the grease, the sludge all the mill liners that would just be dumped, people are collecting that and they are extracting the gold from it out on the East Rand. They are giving the mine a royalty and making a profit for itself. They are listed in London and recorded a profit in the first quarter of this year.

Kamwendo:  Who are those people?

Creamer: This is Goldplat and it is South Africans, but with a listing on the AIM in London.

Kamwendo: Where does this leave the zama-zamas, but maybe we will pick up on that next week? Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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