Small team give big hearted effort during care and maintenance period

The care and maintenance team pulled together during a difficult chapter in the history of Kangra to ensure the mine was ready for reopening. The core care and maintenance team consisted of around 30 people who worked tirelessly to ensure the mine assets were maintained and that Kangra is in the position to ramp up to full productions in the course of the next few months.

Members of the Electrical Engineering team included Surface Electrical Foreman Alton Erasmus, Electrician Sampie Dreyer, and Francois Werner Engineering Foreman.

Sampie and Alton remained on the mine from the first day of lockdown throughout the period that Kangra was placed on care and maintenance, while Francois returned in July 2020. Alton has been with Kangra, since 2010, Sampie since 2008, and Francois started in 2007.

“We were not limited to doing just electrical work, we had to do everything including the water reticulation maintenance, maintenance of the electrical infrastructure, servicing of all the overhead lines, site rehabilitation, maintenance of the reverse osmosis plant, ensuring the drinking water for the shaft met the required standard as well as carrying out plumbing works, among other things,” states Sampie. 

“We were the jack and masters of all trades,” remarks Francois. Alton adds that the team recently has also been working on maintaining the front-end loaders as well as the driving trucks and cranes to make sure they were kept running during the shutdown. 

“It was tough with a very small team around who were working on every single sphere of the operation. That was a challenge and we had our ups and our downs, but we are grateful to see the mine restarting. It means a lot to us and the community.  It's just huge for everyone concerned,” emphasizes Alton.

Furthermore, the team also moved around 30 000 tons of run of mine coal over December 2020. Alton is in charge of the Maquasa West plant, which is a crushing plant that is connected to an overland conveyor belt. “There was coal from H-Block that had been stockpiled and needed to be crushed for a once-off project so we had to start up the plant to crush the coal,” explains Alton.

“We were often at times plant operators, machine operators, and general maintenance men,” Francois enthuses. Sampie adds that: “We had interesting and challenging times, but it was I think overall managed quite well under the circumstances.”

Surface Electrical Foreman | Alton Erasmus

Engineering Foreman | Francois Werner

Electrician | Sampie Dreyer