Displaying items by tag: mine

Japan: Sumitomo Osaka Cement has started using Michibiki, a Japanese satellite positioning system, as part of a demonstration project by its limestone mining operations to improve efficiency. At present the company uses so-called ‘internet of things’ technology such as yard inventory management by drone and rough stone quality management by heavy equipment, including loaders and dump trucks, equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) tablet terminals. The group operates eight limestone mines in Japan and it mines 20Mt/yr.

China: Anhui Conch subsidiary Anhui Haibo Intelligent Technology has announced the signing with Huawei of a contract of collaboration towards developing systems for using driverless vehicles in mineral extraction operations. General manager He Shenzhong said, “Huawei and Conch have joined forces to empower traditional industries with high-intelligence technology. The goal is to create a world-class unmanned open-pit mine project, transform the unmanned technology achievements of open-pit mines into actual productivity projects, and establish unmanned open-pit mines – a new benchmark for the development of traditional industries.”

Brazil: RHI Magnesita plans to spend Euro30m towards building a rotary kiln in its mining site at Brumado, Bahia. The upgrade is expected to increase the production at the unit by more than 30% as the kiln is designed to process up to 140,000t/yr. The announcement follows a planned investment of nearly Euro40m towards the construction of a new headquarters for its South American operations in Contagem, Minas Gerais that was revealed in 2019.

“This investment in the construction of a rotary kiln with innovative technology will enable us to develop a new portfolio of raw materials, in addition to those already available on the market. The new raw materials include noble sinters at very competitive costs on the international market. This will bring operational flexibility, the ability to offer differentiated value-added products to our customers in the Brazilian market, and will put us in an even more competitive position in the global environment,” said Francisco Carrara, president of RHI Magnesita in Brazil and South America. He added that the group was seeing a ‘considerable’ recovery in the steel and cement segments in Brazil.

US: Komatsu plans to rebrand its underground hard rock equipment, surface wheel loaders and new line of blasthole drills to reflect the company’s focus on growth in these areas. The company will retain its iconic P&H and Joy brands for the products longest associated with those names: P&H for its electric rope shovels, hybrid shovels, draglines and 320XPC blasthole drill; Joy for longwall systems, and room and pillar equipment.

“Building on the growth of our mining portfolio, we’re excited to unite more products under the Komatsu brand, while respecting the history and value of the P&H and Joy brands,” said Jeffrey Dawes, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Komatsu Mining. “As we approach Komatsu’s 100th anniversary, it’s a great moment to expand the brand in mining and celebrate the growth of these product lines.”

The Queensland state government in Australia took a blunt approach to health and safety earlier this month when a report it commissioned said that it expected 12 deaths to occur in the mines and quarries sector over the next five years unless changes were made. This is far removed from the usual news stories that industry magazines like Global Cement and others cover. Typically, these are either plants or companies reaching Lost Time Injury (LTI) milestones or sad (but thankfully rare) reports of death.

The forecast in Queensland was based on a review of fatalities in the sector that the state commissioned from Sean Brady, Department of Natural Resource, Mines and Energy, looking at the years 2000 to 2019. Year-by-year the figures were significantly lower than those occurring in the 1900 to 2000 period but didn’t appear to have any discernable pattern. However, when presented as a 12-month rolling sum of fatalities, a two to three year cycle seemed to occur. Brady then went on to look at how the fatalities happened, how the industry behaved and reacted and what could be done to improve the situation. His recommendations included looking more deeply at the causes of seemingly unrelated accidents and then changing overall organisational behaviour and insight through methods such as adopting principles of High Reliability Organisational theory, simplifying the reporting system and changing the standard safety indicators like LTI.

That last point is interesting given the prevalence of LTI indicators on corporate sustainability reports in the cement industry. The point that Brady cites here is that LTI can become a measure of how well injuries are managed, not how safely an organisation is performing. For example, the definition of what an injury is can be manipulated, leading to distortion, as can workers being brought back to work before they recover or into lighter duties. Instead he recommends that ‘serious accidents’ be used in place of LTI. These are defined as incidents that result in a fatality or incidents where an individual requires admission to hospital for treatment of an injury. The preference here is based on so-called ‘serious accidents’ being unambiguous and transparent because they are defined by a third-party medical practitioner.

Wider critiques of health and safety measurements have identified under-reporting of incidents arising from safety incentive programmes, safety culture, employee perceptions of reporting and workplace bullying. This isn’t to say that the LTI measure is not fit for purpose. It has undoubtedly led to higher safety conditions around the world, with reduced injury and mortality from working conditions, and it allows for comparisons between organisations. Yet, any health and safety metric or indicator could be liable to bias or manipulation either unconsciously or consciously. Serious accidents, for example, could be potentially undermined by an organisation having its own medical centre and would also suffer from different health care systems in different locations. Throw in different legislative frameworks around the world and comparing countries can also start to become confusing.

This tension between data and real-life safety is acknowledged by the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) in its sustainability guidance from late 2018. It distinguishes between so-called ‘lagging’ indicators, like LTI and fatalities, which show the effectiveness of a safety programme after the fact and the importance of continual safety improvement plans that aim to prevent adverse events before they happen. It is easy to become lost in a dust storm of facts and figures on health and safety but, as the Queensland authorities and the GCCA agree, measuring health and safety is a means to an end. The aim is zero harm to everyone involved.

Australia: Kirkland Lake Gold plans to build a US$28m cement plant at its Fosterville Gold Mine in Victoria. The unit will be used to manufacture products to fill underground voids left over by the mining process, according to the Bendigo Advertiser newspaper. This in turn will allow ore yields to increase by mining adjacent to the former voids. The new cement plant is expected to be operational in the second half of 2019. The decision to build a cement plant at the mine follows an announcement that gold yields at the site are expected to double in 2019.

India: JSW Cement is planning to target the north and north-east of the country after a proposed initial public offering (IPO) in 2020. The company is looking for acquisitions in the region to meet its production capacity target of 20Mt/yr by 2020, according to a company executive quoted by the Economic Times newspaper. The cement producer has purchased two limestone mines via auction at Nagaur in Rajasthan and one in Gujarat. It is also considering building new cement plants near the mines. The company has a production capacity is 12.8Mt/yr at present.

India: A joint-venture project involving the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) to build a new cement plant at Sundargarh in Odisha has stalled. Following support by local politicians for the plans in February 2017 no further action has been taken, according to the New Indian Express newspaper. SAIL originally made plans in 2006 to use blast furnace slag from the Rourkela Steel Plant and fly ash of NTPC-SAIL Power Company for the unit. It also intended pick up the lease for a limestone mine at Purunapani. However, it later ran into troubles securing state agreement to use the mine.

Australia: Adelaide Brighton has signed a deal with BHP Billiton for the continuation of supply of cement and lime to BHP’s Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. The new contract maintains and extends the long-term relationship between subsidiaries of the companies. It is expected this relationship will continue for a number of years.

India: The Ministry of Coal has cancelled Jaypee Cement’s coal block at Mandla in Madhya Pradesh citing breach of agreement. In a letter the ministry said that the cement producer was ‘not serious about the development of the coal mine,’ according to the Business Standard newspaper. The ministry has accused Jaypee Cement of switching the plant using coal from the mine without permission and of exceeding the agreed output.

The Mandla coal mine was allocated to Jaypee Cement in March 2015 after a bidding process. At first it supplied Jaypee’s Balaji cement plant in Andhra Pradesh. However, production from the mine switched to the Shahabad cement plant in June 2017 following the acquisition of the Balaji plant by UltraTech Cement.