Mining is a sunset industry. No matter how deep we dig or far we go, minerals are finite, and their extraction becomes more challenging every year.
By Wessel Badenhorst*
The Minerals Council South Africa has stated that over the last decade, multi-factor productivity in South Africa has fallen by 7.6%. Mining output has declined by 10% and minerals sales has contracted by 11%. However, although we know that at some point we will run out of mineable resources, for now it is projected that there are still approximately $2.5 trillion of mineral resources in the country. No picture of SA’s future is complete without taking into account what mining can contribute to the economy. And harnessing technology is the only way that we will be able to get the most out of our mining resources in ways that are efficient, effective and responsible.Investing in R&D
To remain competitive, the SA mining industry will have to spend more on technological research and development like it used to under the ‘mining house’ system, where large mining groups had significant R&D budgets. Our current model is simply not sustainable. We will need new technologies to unlock the country’s remaining mineral wealth and this may include artificial intelligence and deep level remote mining employing highly skilled operators, rather than sending workers underground. This is an emotional issue, as the argument is often made that technology will replace employment, and in a country where we are teetering on an unemployment rate of 30.8%, this is not an insignificant consideration. Although one has great empathy with such a concern, it is not a question of choosing or rejecting technological advancement. Without it, some mineral resources cannot be mined at all and for the rest, it is important that mines remain competitive. Technology is the only answer to delaying the inevitable death of the industry once our mineral wealth runs out. The question of labour should be framed differently when it comes to mining and 4IR, as we need to look at it from the perspective that technology is about preserving the mining sector in a new guise. We are then moving from predominantly manual labour to a higher reliance on technology with skilled operators, which is an important step to take for an industry that only recently started developing a social and labour responsibility mindset.Upskilling the workforce
While it is a social, legal and ethical imperative for mining companies to invest in their people, the kind of scale of upskilling that is involved with 4IR and this sector is simply not achievable for the smaller mining companies on their own. The complexity of such an education process is one that starts well before the employment at the mine commences. In the past two decades there have been many new entrants into the mining industry, with the deconcentration of mining efforts through various spin-offs to smaller operators, as well as the opening up of new mining right applications post the deconcentrating of mineral rights. Although the bulk of mining is still in the hands of majors, there are now in excess of 58 mining companies who are members of the Minerals Council. Because these smaller companies do not have the economies of scale to invest in the radical upskilling of most of its staff, it is critical that government starts thinking about what regulations will be helpful here to ease up the employment of highly skilled people in the development of the mining industry. But we need to act quickly. If we think about how speedy technological advancement has been over the past few years, we must not be slow on the uptake and lag behind in upskilling people when it is too late. The government could take a lead role here in co-ordinating the efforts of industry and private companies to ensure there will be suitably skilled individuals who can take up employment in the mining sector in the digital age. This requires considerable co-operation between all parties, including trade unions and bodies such as the Minerals Council South Africa, and if we are too slow, then the mining industry’s sun will set in SA a lot quicker than it should.