Profile: opencast and earthmoving
BENICON OPENCAST MINING
The coal contractor of choice Sentula Mining’s opencast subsidiary, Benicon Opencast Mining (Benicon), is emerging as one of the most significant opencast coal contractors in South Africa. It is also set to achieve substantial growth over the next year as it absorbs Sentula’s Megacube contracts, Sentula CE, Robin Berry and Benicon CEO, Gideon van Heerden, tell Laura Cornish. Absorbing Megacube “Part of the Sentula Mining Services strategy has been to create and establish one, large opencast coal contracting company,” Berry starts. While Benicon has grown from strength to strength since Sentula acquired it in 2006 with the backing and balance sheet of a large, listed company, Megacube has faced numerous challenges, and never achieved similar successes. Berry believes Benicon’s success lies primarily in the length of time it has been in business (since 1979) and its balanced fleet of new and older equipment. The plan, explains Berry, is for Benicon to absorb Megacube’s existing contracts over the next 18 months, and monetise its
remaining idle assets, through selling, trading old equipment for new equipment, and utilising what can be utilised. Megacube currently has three contracts – the first with Keaton Energy’s Vanggatfontein, the second with Exxaro’s
To date, Benicon has eight opencast contracts with Anglo American Thermal Coal in South Africa Glisa colliery and the third with South African Coal Mining Holdings’ (SACMH) Umhlabu colliery. Although the Glisa contract is up for renewal in April this year – Benicon has already tendered for the contract- and the Umhlabu pit due for closure around March, the Vanggatfontein project contract, which is currently ramping up its production, is long-term. “Bringing Vanggatfontein into the Benicon stable will see the company grow by about 25% over the year,” says Van Heerden.
Substantial coal contracts To date, Benicon has eight opencast contracts with Anglo American Thermal Coal (AATC) in South Africa, and late last year diversified outside of the Anglo stable when it was awarded a two year contract with Xstrata Coal South Africa’s (XCSA) Tweefontein colliery. “The nature of the Tweefontein project is very niche,” explains Van Heerden. “I believe we were awarded it because of our understanding of what the project requires. Our contract at one of the projects, AATC’s Landau colliery, is similar.” The contract specifically entails extracting old underground mining pillars via opencast methods. “All of our contracts are long-term,
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Inside Mining 04/2012
Landau’s for example, has been renewed continuously since 1997. We are a professional business, are close to our clients, and believe that our close relationship with Anglo has seen us adopt many of their operational and safety values,” Van Heerden explains.
ABOVE Benicon has one of the best repair workshops in eMalahleni
Growth objectives Benicon currently has a fleet of 380 machines, including five draglines. “We recently supplemented our fleet with the addition of 16 Cat 740 ADTs and five Hitachi excavators, aimed at accommodating the expansion at Zibulo and the new Tweefontein contract,” Van Heerden continues. Speaking of his growth aspirations for the company, Van Heerden says he prefers ‘controlled growth’, “the challenge is to grow in a controlled manner, while still adding value to our clients, and equally important, our shareholders”. While Benicon’s core focus area has been South Africa to date, Van Heerden believes it will be important to expand in countries where the industry is growing, which for the coal industry specifically is in Mozambique