At the end of the raiseboring – or reaming – stage for Shaft 2 of Ivanplats’ Platreef project in South Africa’s Limpopo province, an innovative solution was called for to promptly remove the reaming head and avoid costly standing time.
Fred Durand, Senior Project Manager at Murray & Roberts Cementation, explains that an acceleration of the build plan at Shaft 2 had seen construction underway on the shaft’s headgear in 2024 – before the completion of raiseboring.
“When a reaming head reaches the surface at the end of a raiseboring process, we normally use a mobile crane from surface to help us dismantle the machine and to load it onto trucks for removal from site,” says Durand. “With the acceleration of the mine’s plan for Shaft 2 readiness, however, the construction of the headgear had been brought forward – so it was no longer feasible to position a crane in that area to remove the raisebore machine.”
“The kibble winder was not installed yet, so we had to engineer our way out of this situation to reduce raisebore standing time costs,” he says.