With the end of the year in sight, the initial panic that followed the emergence of COVID-19 has subsided and the world is tentatively getting back up on its feet again. The effects of the sudden, deep drop-off in economic activity and severing of supply chains globally are still being felt, but in spite of challenging market conditions, a collective mood of ‘keep calm and carry on’ has taken hold as we increasingly learn to adjust to the new normal. “Business carries on, you just have to be innovative and find new ways of operating. Coming out of the lockdown, we did extremely well in getting back up and going again and we seem to have found a new steadiness amid all the turmoil from COVID, amongst other things,” explained Lourens de Koning, COO of Fraser Alexander. He continued: “In South Africa, business has been tough, but most of our people are now back at work. We’ve isolated our vulnerable people and we’ve brought our staff back on rotational shifts to ensure we’re doing everything possible to keep our team safe. It’s a complex way of doing things, but it’s working. I’d say we’re at about 98% operationally, only around 100 of our 4,500 employees are still off work. Our Head Office remains closed but highly functional as our people work from home, and our operations are back to near-normal.” Credit must go to the strong management team within Fraser Alexander, shaped through its leadership development programmes. It is a team that believes in the future of the business, the values of the business and reliance on each other to be agile, collaborative and accountable in their various areas of responsibility. The resilience of this team stood Fraser Alexander in good stead when having to deal with the uncertainty and in ensuring effective navigation of the business during the COVID impact. This measured, can-do approach on the part of Fraser Alexander is perhaps to be expected of a company that has not merely survived but thrived for more than a century. This is almost an eternity in business, bearing in mind only a quarter of start-ups, at best, survive to reach their 10th anniversary. Since the company’s founding in 1912, when it became the first service provider to use cocopans to remove tailings from processing plants in the Witwatersrand Basin, Fraser Alexander has grown to become one of the African continent’s foremost blue chip mining brands. Fraser Alexander is the go-to provider of mining support services, including end-to-end breaking, crushing, screening, pelletising, briquetting, mineral processing and tailings mining and deposition services that are tailored to specific ore, waste and run-of-mine needs. Most notably, Fraser Alexander provides such services in a fashion that is socially and environmentally sustainable. On this, Lourens stated: “Our service offerings include; civil construction, mineral processing – predominantly in the coal industry, waste water treatment and then we specialise in tailings management – both re-mining and deposition. The latter is the biggest portion of our business and we have over 120 operations in this area alone. Our footprint stretches across South Africa, South America, and Africa”. Fraser Alexander is a proudly South African company that is true to its roots and committed to its home market. With a tried and trusted support partner network, including the civil construction contractor, GAST, who specialises in liner installation work and worked closely with Fraser Alexander on recently completed large Tailings Storage Facility (TSF) construction projects as well as current projects in Steelpoort and Rustenburg, West Reef Plant Hire and AKS Lining Systems, amongst others. Fraser Alexander has successfully completed a number of large and complex construction projects over the years, including some of the larges TSF’s on the African continent. With a who’s-who list of blue chip clients, including South32, Sibanye, Anglo American, Glencore, Kinross and Vale to name a few, it would be understandable if Lourens and the Fraser Alexander executive team opted to settle for its current market leader status in South Africa and Africa and its burgeoning South American footprint. However greater ambitions and an awareness of how quickly fortunes can change run through the veins of this grand old company. South Africa is a mining powerhouse on the global stage, as the statistics show. With more than US$2.5 trillion in mineral reserves, South Africa is the world’s richest nation by measure of ‘commodity wealth,’ according to Citigroup, possessing the largest reserves of PGMs, manganese, chromite and gold, and being in the top-10 rankings for 16 other minerals. And yet for all its riches, the maturity of the sector combined with other systemic problems have brought about significant falls in production and foreign investment over the past two decades. That is not to say that there isn’t significant opportunity in the South African industry - there is, and Fraser’s and many of its clients have positioned themselves to take advantage of those opportunities. It is no coincidence that Fraser Alexander has lasted a century in an industry as cyclical and challenging as the mining sector. The industry is more dynamic than ever, and Fraser Alexander has identified that the winds of opportunity are blowing both within and especially beyond the shores of Africa. Plans for expansion into new international markets have been uninterrupted by COVID-19 and Fraser Alexander is on the cusp of increasing its global footprint: “There are still very good, long-lasting projects and new opportunities in South Africa, but the South African mining sector is mature and is shrinking overall, as evidenced by the declining output and level of investment in the industry over the past several years. A dynamic political and regulatory environment has also impacted investment in the country and in the sector”. He continued: “In the long-run we’re strategically positioning ourselves to have a more decentralised business model that’s not only sustainable in Africa but sustainable internationally. While we have companies registered in many jurisdictions, we have embarked on the setting up of local and standalone offices in those countries. We’re looking to create sustainable businesses in South America and Africa, with an emphasis on localised solutions. We do see a clear future and this future lies in expansion across Africa and South America. We have a dominant market share in South Africa and whilst there’s always continuous development we don’t see exponential expansion opportunity here. There will always be projects in South Africa that we want to be part of creating and supporting, but the big opportunities for us lie further afield in new markets.” Thanks to its root-and-branch dedication to innovation, well-trained, committed staff, and a highly capable executive team supported by a strong balance sheet and shareholders who want to see the business grow, Fraser Alexander already has the stable foundations upon which international success can be built. To realise its aspirations of becoming a global partner, capable of adding value through the provision of tech-driven smart solutions, Fraser Alexander has embarked on an ambitious modernisation program which will see the company transition away from the operating model it has utilised for manual operations in the past into a technology-centric mechanised solutions provider. Lourens observed: “As with our existing operations that extend to Brazil and Chile, where they have a much less manually operated environment than what we have in South Africa, we’re preparing to expand our footprint into markets that are similarly technology driven. To comply with industry requirements in several international markets, you’ve got to be a lot more automated and able to digitally integrate. We’re gearing for further expansion into South America and other new regions by improving all of our systems so we can compete in these less manually operated markets going forward.” As an example of the work that’s underway to this end, let’s take the assurance associated with the safety and integrity of tailings facility operations and monitoring during its lifecycle, which is receiving much attention internationally due to very significant and disastrous failures in the last few years. Fraser Alexander’s vast experience of over a century of reliable tailings facility management, and their reputation for being one of the best in the business, is testament to its good systems, training programmes, excellent governance principles and committed management oversight which extends to the highest level within the organisation. With the newly released Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management and the emphasis on tailings facility integrity worldwide, Fraser Alexander believes that it has a critical part to play in the assurance of preventing such disasters in future. Fraser Alexander has embarked on a digitalisation of its tailings operational management systems and governance processes by digitally enhancing its TORAS system (Technical and Operational Risk Assessment System). Fraser Alexander has been reliant on a tried and trusted but manual version of this system for many years. While it has been continuously updated and kept compliant to international standards and best practices, and continued to provide essential information to the responsible parties involved (as stipulated in the new Global Standard), a fully digitised and web-based application is currently under development and will be launched before year end. What differentiates this system is its ability to give assurance of the day to day responsibilities, continuous monitoring of operational parameters, and tracking of operational responsibilities and accountability associated with the safe operations of these facilities. In addition, it provides real time, full transparency with oversight capability to all management involved, including the Operator, the Engineer of Record and the Mine Owner. With this initiative being based on tried and tested systems and procedures, Fraser Alexander believe it could be a great added benefit to the international tailings industry initiatives. Additionally, Fraser Alexander is also implementing the use of other technologies such as UAV monitoring systems that allow engineers to conduct infrared surveys which detect seepage in its facilities as well as the incorporation of IOT solutions as part of the system. Another initiative is the automation of its hydraulic mining equipment and the optimisation of material transfer systems that are used for Fraser Alexander’s tailings remining and deposition projects. The manual operation of hydro-mining, tailings material transfer and deposition systems can be arduous, time-consuming and risky. To improve efficiency and safety, Fraser Alexander has initiated the development of fully automated mining units which incorporate GPS navigation and HD cameras, and which are driven from a control room. In addition there is the implementation of a management system that incorporates data gathering and data analytics to provide accurate information about component life cycle patterns and maintenance schedules, thereby improving availability and safety thanks to the new system’s ability to link resources with condition monitoring technology. The advantages of this will be a safer, more efficient hydro-mining operation, leading to increased production.
