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Sandvik Mining supplies drills for contract miner Aveng Moolmans’ Nkomati site

24th December 2014

By: Henry Lazenby

Creamer Media Deputy Editor: North America

  

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TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Global mining equipment and services provider Sandvik Mining has recently provided one of Africa’s largest contract miners Aveng Moolmans with five diesel-powered drill rigs for use on the Nkomati nickel mine, in the north-east of South Africa, near Machadodorp in Mpumalanga.

Speaking to Mining Weekly Online, VP for surface and exploration drilling at Sandvik Mining Ken Stapylton attributed the contract to, among other things, a 15–year relationship with Aveng Moolmans.

Sandvik in October provided Aveng Moolmans with five D25KS drills, which brought the total number of Sandvik drills on its various sites to 40.

The agreement also included a service contract, with Sandvik providing on-site training and spare parts.

The Sandvik D25KS is a diesel-powered, self-propelled crawler-mounted blasthole drill rig for mining and large-scale quarrying. Known for its compact size and powerful undercarriage, it is a stable and highly manoeuvrable surface drill.

The D25KS offers a high-pressure air compressor for drilling with down-the-hole hammers, a two-person cab for training and operator efficiency, a rugged design for durability in continuous drilling operations and an optional external loader that adds flexibility to the hole depth, hole diameter and drilling method.

Aveng Moolmans selected Sandvik as its equipment provider owing to the equipment’s ease of operation, minimal downtime and the ability to transport rigs to other sites.

Sandvik has a wide reach across Africa. It had provided drills to all of Aveng Moolmans’ African mines currently in operation, including the Sishen iron-ore mine, Tshipi Borwa manganese mine, Klipbankfontein Kolomela iron-ore mine, Smaldel coal mine, Sadiola gold mine, Siguiri gold mine, Iduapriem gold mine, Phoenix nickel mine and Langer Heinrich mine.

“We are really pleased to have this additional opportunity in South Africa. It’s a major market with significant mining activity. Our growth in the region depends on great partnerships with customers like Aveng Moolmans,” Stapylton said.

The Nkomati mine is one of the largest nickel reserves in South Africa, having estimated reserves of 408.6-million tonnes of ore grading 0.33% nickel. The 408.6-million tonnes of ore contained about 1.35-million tonnes of nickel metal.

TOUGH MARKET

The market turndown of recent years had been “very tough” on the mining equipment business, Stapylton said, pointing to the slew of major mining houses with their restrictions on capital expenditure, and deferred or cancelled expansion or greenfield development projects.

He said the southern hemisphere, including Southern Africa, Australia and Latin America, were currently the strongest sources of business for Sandvik Mining, owing to most of the current mining projects being located south of the equator.

“All the largest contract-mining operators are currently located in the southern hemisphere, because that’s where the business is.

It has been a tough year because there has not been a lot of capital investment from anyone in mining really. We have to work very hard to cultivate and maintain the strong business-to-business relationships with customers such as Moolmans,” Stapylton said.

CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

He mentioned that equipment operator engagement had become a much more important trend in recent years, as they are the people spending about 12 hours a day in the equipment seats, operating the machines. Paying more attention to the operator experience has helped to improve operator productivity and safety.

Stapylton explained that listening to feedback from its customers, who had significant experience in operating and maintaining Sandvik’s equipment, played a significant role in the company’s strategy to increase business.

“We try to make sure we stay grounded in reality, by taking good fact-based input like reliability, performance, ergonomics and safety and include that to make our products more reliable, or to reduce operating costs, or to take that feedback and put it into our new products.

Stapylton said Sandvik’s machines had proven popular with operators, maintenance technicians and managements alike, providing them with “peace of mind”.

“The equipment’s ergonomically designed interiors, with a focus on operator comfort, and the machine’s predictable operating cycles and costs are what attract customers,” he noted.

Sandvik Mining is currently preparing to launch the first of a new generation of rotary drills next year.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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