Northam Platinum is using innovative, cutting-edge technology and pushing the boundaries of what is possible to bring new metal to the market as quickly as possible.
Northam is one of a handful of platinum group metals (PGMs) miners bringing additional ounces of the metals to the market as supplies of palladium and rhodium fall behind demand from vehicle makers tackling pollution from petrol engines.
As new and stricter emissions regulations are imposed on car makers in Europe, China and India, the demand for palladium and rhodium is soaring, as are their prices.
Globally, SA is the largest source of platinum, which is used mainly in anti-pollution devices in diesel engines, and rhodium, which is ideally suited to scrubbing nitrogen oxide from exhaust gases. The country is the second-largest source of palladium, narrowly behind Russia.
Against this backdrop, companies that have new projects either under way or in planning stages become strategically important. SA mines all six metals making up PGMs, but it cannot extract just select metals from underground.
Northam is one of the companies bringing extra ounces to the market rather than replacing depleted production. Production in 2020 will be more than 600,000oz of four PGMs and it will rise to one-million ounces in coming years.
It is developing its R5.6bn Booysendal South mechanised mine and will ramp it up to steady production over four years.
Northam recently bought the mothballed Eland mine from Glencore for just R175m, making it one of the best deals in the industry considering the R14bn invested in the mine by owners Xstrata, which was taken over by Glencore.
At Eland, Northam and JSE-listed Master Drilling are working out the kinks in a mobile tunnel-boring machine, an innovative piece of equipment that could revolutionise the way mining companies access their ore bodies and develop access points to extract it.
Northam CEO Paul Dunne said on Friday: “It’s working. It creates a low-maintenance excavation.”
Rock challenge
Northam will use it to develop a conveyor shaft system at a rate of 50m a month. “If we can achieve that, it’s a very good number and we’d be very happy. The rate of advance includes fully equipping the shaft.”
The biggest challenge, said Master Drilling’s group business development manager Izak Bredenkamp, was moving cut rock out of the working area and finding a method for a continuous conveyor to do so.
“The vision is to fundamentally change the underground development for mines with improved advances, safety and more stable excavations,” he said.
Compared to conventional decline shaft development, which is different from vertical shafts, and an advance rate of 35m a month, Northam has opted for the tunnel borer, which is more expensive but will access the ore body more quickly, said Dunne.
“It’s all about the time value of money. We’ll establish our production footprint more quickly,” he said.
“A machine like this would be very applicable to Booysendal. Unlike at Eland, the development will be on reef. It will be for the next phase of Booysendal as we go further south, which is an environmentally sensitive area. It will be very good if we can attack it from our underground infrastructure,” he said.
The second contract with Master Drilling is to develop a record 1.43km-deep, 4.6m-diameter production shaft west of Northam’s Zondereinde mine, the world’s deepest platinum mine.
The shaft will be developed using a raise-boring machine. So far, a 40cm-diameter pilot hole has been sunk about half that depth and will meet a tunnel 1.43km below ground accessed from Zondereinde. From this tunnel, a large reamer, which looks like a saucer with teeth scattered around it, will be pulled to the surface, with broken rock collected in the tunnel below.
Dunne and his team were cautious talking about the project, pointing out it had a long way to go and the shaft had to be perfectly vertical to accommodate rails and cages.
“Accuracy is a critical aspect of the scope and we have employed the latest technology to ensure we deliver within specification,” said Bredenkamp.
Despite being down a little in 2020, Northam’s share price rose 185% in 2019, as global PGM prices soared. The share reached a record high of R148.82 on February 19 2020, when it leapt 7.93%.
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