SAFETY IS THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY

Safety

The mining industry, together with all its participants, takes safety very seriously. However, as a relatively new company in the African environment, Enaex Africa has the advantage of approaching safety on the continent from an entirely new perspective.

A Chilean-based company with over 100 years of experience, the Enaex Group is the third largest mining explosives company in the world. As an international company, it has access to research, product development, and innovation from all its businesses around the world.

According to John Schulze, COO and Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) director at Enaex Africa, the company’s values are aligned within the group, especially its commitment to safety. Thanks to this, he says, Enaex is able to share learnings and technologies across the group, directly enabling it to implement best practices across all areas, including safety.

“Being a locally managed operation, Enaex Africa is very selective in its safety initiatives, focusing only on those that will have a direct impact on the wellbeing of all stakeholders. We are also a very agile company that can act quickly when the need arises,” he says.

“At Enaex Africa, safety is our number one priority, and is a constant part of everything we do. This means that safety takes priority over any processes or procedures that are in place. It is about changing the way we live and do things. It is about creating a true safety culture at work and home. Everyone must be mindful of it, all the time.”

The company understands that fatalities and serious injuries within the mining industry can be devastating, and may have long-term e ects on employees and their families. That is why the focus is placed on human reliability, says Schulze. It is Enaex’s responsibility to highlight potential risk factors and eliminate them through technology.

“We pride ourselves on having a mining zero fatality rate in the month of January, and we will strive to keep it at zero with our innovative solutions. Furthermore, we also aim to be the leader in innovation – with a strong focus on ensuring our blasting operations are fully automated in the future.

“We believe that by being consistent in our approach to safety, this will set the standard at which to operate in the future.”

Innovation And Technology

One of the core values at Enaex, he says, revolves around innovation and entrepreneurship, and the company culture is based on leading technologies and entrepreneurship in the industry. The driving force behind these innovative solutions, says Schulze, is to humanise the mining industry, have fewer people underground, and have more safety for the industry in general.

“Innovation is essential, because it is the motivation behind all that we have done up to now. We have invested a lot of time and money to develop these leading industry technologies – and to innovate and enhance corporate culture, while focusing on humanising the mining industry.

“We are living in a rapidly changing technological world, which is why we believe that completely tele-operated mines are the future of the industry. At Enaex, we have already begun implementing real teleoperations in Chile with one of our mobile mining unit trucks.

“Part of the deployment of this technology will include robotics, to demonstrate how robots will replace areas of manual labour in opencast mines. We have also completed the first successful trials to undertake 100% tele-operated operations underground.”

He says the impact of such an approach is extensive. Not only does this take people out of the danger zone, but at the same time we are upskilling them because teleoperating a truck is not the same as actually driving a truck.

“This will not only enhance job security thanks to the additional technical skills, but will also be safer for employees. Our upskill programme in this regard focuses on computer science and programming,” he says.

“The world is changing, and Enaex will move with it, as the types of jobs and skills required for these jobs continue to change. Technology is already part of the present day, and the current generation is leading these changes and enabling a technologydriven future. As a company, we will always focus on decreasing mining risks, just as we focus on keeping our employees healthy and safe.”

Environmental Impact

According to Schulze, Enaex recognises that mining can have significant environmental impacts, and the company works to minimise these by developing innovative blasting solutions.

“We take the risk by solving problems, and with our long-term mindset, we prioritise innovation through tele-operations and robotics, with a view to protecting employees from the dangers in the mining industry. Through upskilling and innovation, we safeguard both the environment and our workforce.

“Our innovation and entrepreneurship values are motivated by our corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives, as these initiatives are crucial to us leaving a positive impact, everywhere we operate.”

As a good corporate citizen, Enaex is increasing its e orts to address the high levels of socio-economic issues that South Africa is facing, by leveraging technology and the organisation’s global reach to prioritise community needs within the industry.

“Our unique blasting solutions provide complete accuracy to eliminate unnecessary environmental damage. We provide our customers with a flexible and managed range of quality services and products, while our team assists with sustainability and environmental management throughout the entire blasting process.

“Our mission is to limit our carbon footprint, and we can achieve this with control tools, expert explosive placement, and innovative technology for the mining industry.

“To this end, we are currently optimistic about the use of green ammonia, and Chile is currently in the process of starting a project to create green ammonia. Using green ammonia, we will be able to make a positive impact on the environment and limit our water wastage and carbon footprint,” he says.

Communities And Esg

Schulze is adamant that the company’s main priority is life. Life and land are linked and that is why Enaex also focuses on protecting the environment and surrounding communities. This is another area where the business can use technology to its advantage, to protect life through sustainable mining.

“A good example of the responsibility we take as a company is the initiative we have launched to sponsor an early childhood development school. We believe at Enaex Africa that education is an essential pillar for Africa,” he says.

“To change the lives of children for the future, we need to tackle the importance of education before the age of five now. That is why Enaex Africa supports early childhood development at a pre-primary school in Limpopo. This support manifests as upgrades for the infrastructure and technology, along with the provision of additional skills for the teachers.”

He notes that this is a long-term project, with the follow-up goal being to focus on developing a primary school too. Ultimately what the business wants to achieve is to provide the educational foundation to give these children the opportunity to go to university – and to potentially return to work for Enaex someday.

“Through community development of this nature, we can improve the impact of our environmental sustainability plans, as the community itself will have the necessary skills to use our tele-operation and robotic solutions. You could say we are building the future of safe mining with our innovations in robotics and tele-operations,” says Schulze.

“Enaex does in fact have a dedicated team looking at its corporate social responsibility initiatives, to ensure these continuously improve the lives of the communities in which we operate.

“Furthermore, we have another dedicated team that is specifically focused on the environment and sustainability of our business, which is also of the utmost importance.”

ESG and CSR are closely linked to the focus on building projects that empower communities while promoting a zero fatality rate, he says. Innovation, on the other hand, is largely driven by the need to minimise the impact on the environment and sustainability, and to improve the wellbeing of the people involved in the industry.

“These ESG initiatives are based on creating a safer environment that protects our employees from fatalities, while guaranteeing customer satisfaction. We have also taken the initiative to increase our hazardous waste management, which

Taking The Lead In Responsible Mining

■ Enaex Africa is committed to ESG and empowering all African mines with cutting-edge technology and innovation, through teleoperations and local distribution centres.

■ The company is leading the way towards a secure and socially responsible mining future, by implementing its core company values wherever it operates. Enaex’s tele-operation and robotic solutions guarantee responsible mining, by focusing on human reliability that teaches employees new skills to manage the trucks from a safe distance.

once again will increase our environmental protections, including water optimisation.”

Enaex also places great value on protecting the environment and implementing water sustainability. Water is an essential resource that clearly needs to be protected from the hazardous waste that is linked with mining explosives. The organisation’s water optimisation initiatives are implemented to protect and limit its water usage on a global scale.

“In the end, Enaex Africa understands the value of both clear environmental policies and strong safety measures, and we place these first in everything that we do. Not only do we want to keep our employees safe, but we also want to do so by using innovation to drive our leading technologies even further, while empowering our employees, upskilling them and encouraging them to always adopt a safety-first mindset,” says Schulze.