COO's Message | Edition 009
Clifford Hallatt - Canyon Coal COO
It has been slightly more than a year since my appointment as Canyon Coal’s Chief Operating Officer and it has been rewarding to oversee the company’s continued impressive growth trajectory. My vision is to develop and grow Canyon Coal to its full potential for the benefit of all employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders.
This year will be critical for Canyon Coal as we seek to make major progress on the development of two of our new mining projects namely Gugulethu (previously De Wittekrans) near Hendrina, in Mpumalanga, and Bekezela Colliery (previously Palmietkuilen) near Springs, Gauteng.
We will invest approximately R600-million in the Phase 1 development of Gugulethu and create 430 jobs. Bekezela’s capital requirement is in the region of R1.5-billion which will result in 320 direct job opportunities. These mines are being developed with the intent, in part, to provide Eskom with options to procure the right-quality coal at a competitive price.
Bekezela Colliery is situated adjacent to the Phase 1 section of Canyon Coal’s Ukufisa Colliery. This will increase the life-of-mine of Ukufisa, which had an original life of mine of about five years. Clay mining started at Ukufisa in December 2018. The Bekezela Colliery will be an opencast mine, with a target run-of-mine (ROM) production of 600 000 tons a month, once in steady-state production, with a scheduled life of mine of 22 years. Additionally, Gugulethu has an estimated life of mine of about 25 years, based on a run of mine production of 300 000 tons a month. Phase 1, which will entail opencast mining, has a reserve of 14.3-million tons, while Phase 2 will add an underground component. Phase 1 consists of three pits, one of which has been designed with the specific purpose of gaining access to the underground reserve.
Furthermore, the opencast component of the Gugulethu project is the key to unlocking the project’s full potential and, therefore, it will fund the capital for the larger underground section. The Mining Right, Water Use Licence (for both opencast and underground) and Environmental Authorisation have been granted. Canyon Coal also owns the farm portion on which all the surface infrastructure will be developed.
Finally, we also have decided to rename our projects to better reflect the heritage of the local mining areas in which they are located. This was because we view these mining projects as valuable to both the company as well as our host communities. In appreciation of cultural diversity, we renamed several of our projects, namely Sukuma (previously Springfield), Thuso (previously Witfontein), Ukwenama (previously Driefontein), Umzila (previously Birmingham) and Gila (previously Koppie)
