{"id":13621,"date":"2014-10-14T16:55:14","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/?p=13621"},"modified":"2014-10-14T16:55:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:55:14","slug":"labour-strife-safety-concerns-push-s-africa-platinum-mechanisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/?p=13621","title":{"rendered":"Labour strife, safety concerns push S.Africa platinum mechanisation"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_13622\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13622\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/A-man-walks-past.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/A-man-walks-past-300x195.jpg\" alt=\"A man walks past a train carrying goods, at Anglo Platinum&quot;s Khomanani shaft 1 mine in Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13622\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/A-man-walks-past-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/A-man-walks-past.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13622\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man walks past a train carrying goods, at Anglo Platinum&#8221;s Khomanani shaft 1 mine in Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">RUSTENBURG South Africa (Reuters) &#8211; For decades, production in South Africa&#8217;s platinum mines has rested on the muscular shoulders of men risking life and limb to drill into the rock face with jackhammers.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Three years of labour upheaval and a political push to make the shafts safer and transform the low-wage workforce have set in motion a drive to replace such rock drillers with machines.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;Labour militancy is dictating our push to mechanization and boardrooms will rubber stamp this stuff,&#8221; said Peter Major, a fund manager at Cadiz Corporate Solutions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The costly change is happening despite the obstacles thrown by geology, low platinum prices and capital constraints.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">At Anglo American Platinum&#8217;s Bathopele mine near Rustenburg west of Johannesburg, technology has already made rock drillers obsolete and hydraulic machines do the job, blazing an automated trail others are keen to follow.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Elsewhere in the platinum shafts, plans are afoot to roll out mechanisation, including at Amplats&#8217; rival Impala Platinum, which recently sent a team to Bathopele to observe the lay-out &#8211; an unprecedented example of cooperation in an industry that has long been fiercely competitive and secretive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Implats, Amplats and Lonmin, the world&#8217;s top three producers, are also partnering at Bathopele with mining products company Joy Global to develop rock-cutting technology, which would remove the need for blasting and rock drilling.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Joy Global\u2019s chief executive Ted Doheny told Reuters in a phone interview from the company\u2019s Wisconsin headquarters that implementation would take another five to ten years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">CAPITAL UNITES<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The big three platinum producers are united as never before, having collectively faced a five-month wage strike by the hardline Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) this year which pushed them to the brink and dealt a crushing blow to investor perceptions of South Africa&#8217;s mines.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The automation drive is underway: Amplats wants to sell off its conventional mines to focus on mechanisation while Implats&#8217; chief executive has said &#8220;we will mechanise where we can.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The industry says the pivot to mechanisation was in the works even before AMCU&#8217;s emergence on the platinum belt, where it has poached tens of thousands of members from the rival National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in a turf war that has killed dozens and unleashed the recent waves of labour unrest.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Also underpinning the drive has been calls from the government and ruling ANC for the industry to move away from the labour-intensive, low-wage model rooted in the apartheid era.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A government safety drive with the goal of &#8220;zero harm&#8221; has also triggered a scramble to find less lethal mining methods.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Scores still die each year in South Africa&#8217;s deep and dangerous mines though much progress has been made since the 1980s when hundreds of black miners perished annually, with much of the toll inflicted on rock drill operators.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;The shafts we are designing today will be in operation for 50 years and one has to take a view on whether rock drillers will be available, and whether using people in that way will still be acceptable,&#8221; said Implats spokesman Johan Theron.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Safety aside, the triumph of technology over geology in the platinum shafts will have other consequences and hit AMCU hard, as its members are mostly semi-skilled, at the bottom of the wage scale, and perform tasks mechanised equipment will replace.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Rock drillers also comprise the union&#8217;s hardline core and so the reduction in their numbers could blunt AMCU&#8217;s militancy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;AMCU understands that mechanisation can undermine its collective power,&#8221; said Crispen Chinguno, a researcher at the sociology department of Johannesburg&#8217;s University of the Witwatersrand and an expert on the union.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">At Bathopele, higher-paid employees including AMCU members broke union ranks during the big strike this year and it started limited production before the wider industry stoppage ended.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Officials from AMCU declined comment on the issue of mechanisation. Rival unions have concerns about jobs but welcome the mechanised trend if the aim is better pay and safety.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cWe have a problem with the introduction of mechanization if its sole purpose is to replace labour. But if it&#8217;s about safety and workers getting more pay, then we don&#8217;t have such a problem,&#8221; Frans Baleni, NUM&#8217;s General Secretary, told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">MAN AND MACHINE<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Geology has confounded industry attempts to mechanise in the past because the platinum reef is generally too narrow, or at too steep a gradient, for machines to easily access. The gold reef also presents challenges on this front.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is changing as firms like Atlas Copco and rival Sandvik develop machines that can work in ever tighter spaces and steeper conditions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">These include &#8220;drill rigs&#8221; and &#8220;roof bolters&#8221; that will replace the human rock drillers, whose jackhammers grind into the earth to insert explosives for blasting or safety bolts for underground roof support.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There are also mechanical sweepers with rotating steel brushes to move debris &#8211; a job still done in many South African mines by men with shovels.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In a shallow crevice at Bathopele, a hydraulic roof bolter designed by Atlas Copco drilled into the rock above, where the safety bolts will be inserted. Metres away crouched a man remotely controlling it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">With a vertical hydraulic drill protruding in front, it resembles a flattened bulldozer that can squeeze into tight spaces: in this case around 1.2 metres (four feet).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;We can do this far more productively and we remove the people from the hazard zones,&#8221; said Judd Barlow, head of production at Bathopele&#8217;s central shaft.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">CAPITAL CONSTRAINTS<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">On the platinum belt, Bathopele is a proto-type and the swing to mechanisation will not come overnight.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For older mines, &#8220;the capital expenditure will make no sense because of their life span,&#8221; said Jim Porter of the University of the Witwatersrand&#8217;s Centre for Mechanised Mining Systems.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This is the challenge faced by Implats, which does not have a vast pool of capital at the moment, given the depressed price for the precious metal used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles. Platinum is near 5-year lows.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Implats, which had net cash at the end of its financial year in June of 4.3 billion rand ($389 million), is also burning up money on its post-strike ramp up.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Gerhard Potgieter, head of growth projects at Implats, says the company&#8217;s first-generation shafts around Rustenburg, known as &#8220;the Old Men,&#8221; will not be mechanised given their age.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The best potential for mechanization can be found on its \u201cBig 5\u201d shafts, large second and third-generation operations. All of Implats&#8217; tunnelling operations are also being converted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Back at Bathopele, the surface presents as sharp a contrast with conventional mines as its underground operations.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Unlike most of the mines in the area, where workers are bused in or trudge on foot from grim shantytowns, Bathopele&#8217;s skilled and higher-paid employees drive themselves and its parking lot is full of gleaming new cars and pick-up trucks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&#8220;We actually have a parking problem here, we are running out of space,&#8221; said one employee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RUSTENBURG South Africa (Reuters) &#8211; For decades, production in South Africa&#8217;s platinum mines has rested on the muscular shoulders of men risking life and limb to drill into the rock face with jackhammers. Three years of labour upheaval and a political push to make the shafts safer and transform the low-wage workforce have set in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-te-public"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Labour strife, safety concerns push S.Africa platinum mechanisation - Arab Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.arabtelegraph.com\/?p=13621\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"ar_AR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Labour strife, safety concerns push S.Africa platinum mechanisation - Arab Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"RUSTENBURG South Africa (Reuters) &#8211; For decades, production in South Africa&#8217;s platinum mines has rested on the muscular shoulders of men risking life and limb to drill into the rock face with jackhammers. 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