The global economic downturn has meant opportunity for AMEC Minproc to expand its activities in Africa, as Ruari McCallion learns from Colin Kubank.
Namibia is probably best-known across the world for diamonds—but there’s a lot more to it than that. It is a mineral-rich country and one of the latest developments is a uranium mine at Swakop Uranium’s Husab project, south of Rössing, which is 70 kilometres from the coastal town of Swakopmund. Demand for uranium has been rising, which raises a question: it is a generally held view that uranium nuclear fuel is virtually endlessly reprocessable, so why the need for new resources?
“There is a lot of fuel available from reprocessing but when you look at the power generation projects for uranium consumption, demand outstrips the total reprocessing resource,” says Colin Kubank, AMEC Minproc’s managing director for Africa. According to mine developer Extract Resources, demand for uranium (U308) is expected to outstrip supply by 2015, as countries across the world turn to nuclear power to supplement or replace conventional generating sources. That is good news for AMEC Minproc, which provides a full suite of services to get mines from feasibility to operation.
AMEC, of which AMEC Minproc is part, provides services to oil and gas exploration and development companies, and to mining organisations. “We are an engineering consulting company,” explains Kubank, “and our core expertise is the provision of high value consultancy, engineering and project management services to the world’s energy, power and process industries. AMEC Minproc is a leading international engineering and project delivery business specialising in the design, procurement and construction of mineral resources projects. Within the group, we have geologists and resource estimation specialists, mining engineers, ore processing experts, environmental scientists, geotech scientists, air specialists and the full range of expertise required for the delivery of feasibility studies, detailed engineering design, and project and construction management to get the mine in to operation.”
AMEC Minproc is a true one-stop-shop for the exploitation of natural resources. Established in Australia in 1978, it became part of fellow Australian company GRD Group in 2000, which was itself acquired by UK-based AMEC plc in November 2009. Being part of a large, global organisation has enabled Minproc to expand its range of services—it now offers geology and resource definition; mining engineering; mineral processing technology selection and design; infrastructure development; environmental studies; project management skills and proven control systems. With construction management capability, procurement services and broad technical capability, it’s small wonder that the company is seeing the need for its services rise as the demand for natural resources grows as the global economy comes out of the downturn.
“We originally opened our South African office in Johannesburg in 2003,” says Kubank, “and we delivered a number of mining projects, such as the Tenke Fungurume copper/cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Freeport McMoRan Inc, as well as a number of gold and platinum projects.” The DRC project was worth a total of around US$1.8 billion; AMEC Minproc’s involvement was to the tune of around $1 billion of that.
The company’s long and impressive list of projects also includes the Munali nickel project in Zambia; reconfiguration and recommissioning of the Syama gold plant in Mali; detailed design for the Essakane gold plant, Burkina Faso; and a range of projects in Ghana. In recent years, it has designed and installed a number of large-scale semiautogenous grinding (SAG) mills at locations around the world. It has comminution (rock reduction) expertise in-house, which has been deployed at sites such as Cadia Hill and Telfer.
“We have around 75 people in the Johannesburg office,” Kubank continues. “We were larger but the global downturn meant that funding for projects dried up. We had to downsize to 50 people at the end of 2009—but the wheel is now turning. We have a lot of feasibility study work on at the moment and we expect to be back to our former size by the end of 2011.”
The company’s customers are primarily Australian, which reflects its own origins. Australian companies are busy all over Africa; but AMEC Minproc’s geographical focus is West and sub-Saharan Africa. As well as uranium, activity is on the rise in gold, platinum and copper, but not to the exclusion of other minerals. And you can’t bring minerals to market without processing.
“We recently completed a platinum concentrator on the eastern limb of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa for Platinum Australia, a ‘junior’ mining company,” Kubank says. As AMEC Minproc’s expertise reaches from end to end of the mining industry, the company believes that it makes sense to get involved as early into a project as possible.
“Early entry enables us to optimise the project and deliver our expertise to develop it in the most effective manner,” he explains. “A lot of mining projects are in locations that are difficult to get at—one of our strengths is in logistics planning, for getting heavy equipment to remote sites, for example. Whether it be by road or air, we do whatever needs to be done to access the site, open it up and get it running smoothly.”
Working in Africa is challenging, as AMEC Minproc outlines in its capability statement. It lists seven primary issues that mean construction of a major resource project is different from other continents. There are 53 countries, which means numerous different legislative frameworks. There are few regional agreements on mining law; currency exchange; commercial and tax law; or customs controls. There are no less than four different languages. Political instability is, unfortunately, a reality in several areas—some of the most attractive for mining and minerals among them. For a continent with such a long coastline, there are few appropriate port facilities—the transport infrastructure is nowhere near the levels of Europe, Asia and the Americas. In addition, communications beyond the capitals and maybe coastal areas are poor, unreliable and often expensive. So the unwary can end up in the middle of a very chastening experience.
But the mineral wealth of Africa cannot be ignored. Experience is the operative word; and AMEC Minproc has been on the continent for many years and worked in a significant number of its countries. It also has a reputation for a sound understanding of critical project execution issues across the board. With that level of experience, depth and breadth of expertise and the resources of a global corporation to call on, AMEC Minproc is an indispensible partner in Africa. www.minproc.com
