South African Mines Brace for New Outages

South Africa’s mining industry is bracing itself for the loss of production and jclinker grinding machineobs in the event the electricity outages envisaged by power utility Eskom are implemented. Although sacrifices made by the industry to scale down production by 10 percent could give Eskom a reprieve, there is uncertainty about job stability in the industry, which employs about 500 000 people.

The impact on mining houses is likely to vary according to the extraction methods. Gold producers use intensive deep level mining methods, which are high in electricity usage, while coal producers use open cast mining, which uses the least electricity. John Wallington, the chief executive at Coal of Africa, said yesterday that the company did not have contingency plans should Eskom fail to put in place a safety net to deal with the energy gap. “It will be difficult if we are to have load shedding. It was strenuous in 2008, the issue of power is serious and could cause difficulties if we don’t handle it correctly.”