The colossal space of Phalanndwa Canyon Coal
Phalanndwa Colliery is situated approximately 15km outside the town of Delmas. It has its own general safety such as "zero tolerance policy with regard to drugs and alcohol". All the tools and chemicals brought onto the site must be declared, checked and approved by responsible mine official. The speed limit around the site is 40km/hour.
They mine 120 000 tonnes of coal per month and remove approximately 280 000m3 of waste rocks and soil every month to get to the coal. Canyon Coal historically made use of contractors to do the mining but they establish mining company in March 2015. The mine works 3×8 hours mining shifts per 24 hours cycle and stop mining on Saturday evening 22h00 and start at 06h00 on Monday morning.
They also have their mining information such as two pits which are mined with the rehabilitation of the mined out area being done at the same time. They have a method of mining and three seams of coal are mined. The 3 seams include upper seams which are approximately 0,7m thick, main seams are 3,5 to 4,0 meter thick and lower seams are ranges from 1,5 to 3,2m thick.
"Emulsion explosive is used to conduct all blast on the mine, its delivered by bulks explosives in plants on the back of the truck and the explosives are then pumped down the blast hole", said Mr GM Alan Mabbett. The topsoil is removed and placed dumps for later final rehabilitation levelling. Soft overburned is placed on the rehabilitation area. Hard inner seams waste and shale are either dozed away in a pit or loaded and trucked to dump in the pit.
Phalanndwa Colliery has its own washing plants like drums (cyclone plants), design capacity 300 tons per hour and coal is washed to a 25 CV product, plant yield average of 55%.
Canyon Coal developed the social and labour plan implementation to help around the neighboring area with employments (about 84% of the employees reside in the Victor khanye Municipality and employment forum), housing (every employee receives a monthly housing allowance), Led project (on the year 2016 development of the Given Biko Bridge it was officially handed to Khanye local Municipality on the 1st of July 2016).
Mr GM Alan Mabbett continued and said the skill development which was conducted in April 2016 due to the issue of the mining rights, training couldn't be implemented. The site has a huge space which the works can work freely.
By Abigail Masengana