The determined Canyon Coal team has brought yet another project in the company’s ambitious pipeline to fruition: the Khanye mine has commissioned its permanent processing plant and is ramping up to a nameplate capacity of 240 000 tons a month

The commissioning of the plant is a remarkable achievement for Canyon Coal. The company has established a fully-fledged mine within a year, bringing local economic development to Bronkhorstspruit.

“It is a big achievement to open a mine within one year – to complete all the planning and pull all the parts of a project of this nature together,” says Khanye’s general manager Guy Thompson, a seasoned mining professional.

“The success is owing to the company’s culture of getting down and doing the work, and doing it in a cost-efficient and effective way.”

The commissioning of the processing plant follows a period of about six months of open-cast mining and processing through the interim plant on site. The team produced 20 000 tons per month of saleable coal from June 2018, making the Khanye project work for the company during the construction phase. The coal was stockpiled and transported to the Forfar rail siding before being exported through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal.

The commissioning of the plant in January this year, which essentially involved running tests on the processing plants, inspired confidence that the mine will reach full production in two to three months.

PROCESSING COAL TO SERVE THE MARKET

On site, excavators and ADTs extract coal from the mine’s southern and two northern open-cast pits. The processing plant is capable of blending material from the three coal seams at the mine with the goal of producing the best yield and quality of coal.

The Khanye processing plant is the first large coal dense medium (Larcodem) plant in the company. It has different screen configurations which allow material of varying size to be processed, from large and small nuts through to peas.

“The plant provides us with the flexibility to serve the market’s needs,” says Thompson. “It washes the coal to different qualities as clients have different requirements. To this end, the mine has an on-site laboratory which samples coal every two hours, with plant settings being adjusted accordingly.”

The Khanye mine is operating full blast, employing 334 people on site, including 15 community contractor companies and a number of plant operators and assistants from the local area. The number of people working on site is expected to increase to 379 in future. Canyon Coal is building on this success as it continues its bold drive to develop new mines.