The brave new world of mining puts machines at the rock face

The future of mining arrived quietly on a winter's day in July when South Africa's newest platinum mine, Booysendal, began production in the mountains on the border between Limpopo and Mpumalanga, about 35km from Mashishing (the former Lydenburg).

When at full production, the mine - owned by Northam Platinum - will produce 160000 ounces of platinum group metals a year. But it will do so in ways that are so different to the traditional deep-level mining outside Rustenburg and on the gold fields that it should almost be categorised as a different industry altogether.

This is a mine where large, low-profile Scandinavian machines with tyres that come up to your waist do the mining at the hands of technically trained operators, none of whom earn below the R12500 a month that was recently demanded for deep-level miners out on the western arc of the platinum-rich reefs.

Descending into the mine on the underground equivalent of a ski-lift, you take the gentle decline parallel to a large rubberised conveyor belt that moves rough dark grey ore the other way with a loud electronic hum.

The new-generation machines require new-generation miners. One example is Karabo Rapolo, who tells me she is a "strata control observer". From the local community - the vast majority of workers are locally recruited - and armed with a BSc from the University of Pretoria, Rapolo inserts a long fibre-optic camera into a hole in the roof of the mine, about 200m below the surface.

She checks a handheld monitor as the camera moves upwards to test the stability of overhead rock formations, something that is critical when mining with what is called the "bord and pillar" method. This technique removes rock, leaving a checkerboard of excavated "rooms" supported by untouched pillars of rock at regular intervals.

With her bottle of Lemon Twist sticking jauntily from her white overalls's pocket and her eyes on the camera monitor, Rapolo is the very antithesis of the deep-level miner.

In the section she is checking, nine "rooms" are being mined by just 11 people operating low-profile drill rigs, load-haul dumpers and "bolters" - automated machines that drill holes in the roof and insert metal rods as support.

The job that is closest to that of a traditional miner in this section belongs to Sibongile Paya, a drill rig operator. His giant red machine punches holes into the rock to prepare it for blasting. He operates the drills from a cabin using electronic controls - a far cry from the rock-drill operators in the deep-level mines who have to wrestle machines into position and then use muscle power to guide their bits into the rock.

He tells me he comes from Mthatha and used to work for Lonmin before being recruited by Booysendal to take up one of the few jobs for which there were no locally qualified workers.

Not far away, Werner Emmenis is operating a bolter with a device that looks like it belongs to a gaming console. He uses joysticks to manipulate the drill into position and to bolt on extensions as it makes its way into the roof. Then the machine rotates like the mechanised arm of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator as steel rods are shoved deep into the holes.

At the surface is a large processing plant where the ore is crushed and treated before being sent to Northam's Zondereinde smelter. From there it will be flown by helicopter to OR Tambo International Airport and by freight jumbo to Germany, where it will be further refined. The last leg of the production journey takes the further-refined platinum and palladium to a plant in Port Elizabeth where the final refining takes place.

This new world has its dangers. Capital costs are heavy and much of the machinery is priced in US dollars, exposing margins to the volatile rand. But the benefits are beginning to outweigh the risks in the eyes of investors. For one thing, Booysendal uses a fraction of the labour of traditional operations. "Two-hundred-thousand tons are being mined by 1500 people," said general manager Willie Theron. "In a conventional mine, it would take 5500 to 6000 people to do that."

For another, the better paid, more highly skilled workforce is less likely to strike and the mine has none of the "exploitation" stigma that accompanies deep-level operations with their necessarily cruder working conditions.

"We have schooled employees. The majority of our skills are local. We do not talk Fanagalo on this mine. We talk in English," said Theron.

And mining this way is safer. The mine has had no fatalities and only 15 injuries since it began operating, lowering the political temperature and the likelihood of labour disputes.

As if to underscore the mine's new-age credentials, two oval areas of vegetation have been fenced off and placed off limits to mining to protect the rare Cicada Pynca Sylvia, which emerges once every seven years to emit its shrill call.

Surfaces disturbed during the building of roads and dams are covered by netting impregnated with local grass seeds to restore them to their natural state.

Northam CEO Paul Dunne is in a good position to compare mechanised mining to deep-level mining. Northam's other platinum mine to the north of Rustenburg, Zondereinde, is an old-school, labour-intensive, deep operation.

Mechanised mining, he said, was "a significant safety differentiator. Overall, this operation will have a lower cost than Zondereinde. It's highly beneficial to mechanise."

Not every reef lends itself to the methods used at Booysendal. To mine in this way, you need reefs close to the surface and thick enough to yield enough mineral-rich ore when the machines cut their way in at a height of just more than 2m.

But as investor appetite for stable production without the stigma of deep-level mining grows, Booysendal gives a tantalising glimpse of the future.

"There has been a rebalancing of the scales between mechanised and traditional mining," said Dunne.