Mining Focus Africa

Top Menu

  • Subscribe
  • Minerals
  • Projects
  • Machinery
  • Video’s
  • Advertise
  • Magazine
  • Directory

Main Menu

  • Home
  • International News
  • Local News
  • Events
  • Business
  • Energy
  • Technology
  • Contact Us
Sign in / Join

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account
Lost your password?

Lost Password

Back to login
  • Subscribe
  • Minerals
  • Projects
  • Machinery
  • Video’s
  • Advertise
  • Magazine
  • Directory

logo

Header Banner

Mining Focus Africa

  • Home
  • International News
  • Local News
  • Events
  • Business
  • Energy
  • Technology
  • Contact Us
  • SRK’s decade in DRC evolves to local ownership

  • BIA Group to supply Furukawa & RTDrill brands across Central and West Africa for Euroforgroup

  • Mozambique the next frontier in graphite production

  • BASE Resources passes important resource milestones in Kenya

  • Cable, components and critical space exploration

  • Africa’s edge in the green mineral economy

  • Keeping the faith in EA public participation processes during Covid-19

  • Ivanplats seeks $420m financing to develop South Africa’s Platreef mine

  • Transforming the Logistics Operations of the African Mining Industry

  • Mining Indaba insights: Mines push on as South Africa plays catch-up

Projects
Home›Projects›Orange Business Services and De Beers co-innovate geofencing solution to enhance crew safety in offshore mining

Orange Business Services and De Beers co-innovate geofencing solution to enhance crew safety in offshore mining

By Micheal van Wyk
September 2, 2020
152
0
Share:

Manda Banda | 1 September, 202

Orange Business Services, a network-native digital services company and De Beers Marine South Africa, a division of De Beers – a diamond company, have jointly installed and tested a customised IoT solution to provide geofencing to maintain safe working distances for crew around the heavy machinery involved in marine diamond mining operations.

The new solution was successfully piloted on board the MV Mafuta, currently the world’s largest offshore diamond mining vessel owned and operated by Debmarine Namibia and operating up to 150 km off the coast of Namibia, in Southern Africa.

Diamond mining vessels bring crew and heavy machinery into relatively close proximity and De Beers is committed to ensuring the highest standards of operating safety for all personnel.

The Orange IoT solution was developed in response to De Beers’ ‘zero harm’ objectives and it followed an initial engagement and joint exploratory workshop with the Orange Business Services team in South Africa that focused on IoT technologies, such as Bluetooth Low Energy locators and wearable sensors, as a precision crew locator tool, integrated with onboard antennas and an Orange software engine.

In the pilot, Orange Business Services imported the Mafuta’s AutoCAD files and undertook an onboard site survey to map antenna locations to geofence a predetermined area on the vessel. Ten crew members were equipped with wrist sensors. If one of the crew breached the geofenced area onboard the vessel, the ship’s bridge was alerted immediately.

De Beers Group Technology SA, a research and development (R&D) arm of De Beers Group, is now further exploring additional applications, such as a breach alert function to link the sensors directly to the mining machinery via a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) control system and PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), to facilitate a failsafe cut-off in the event of a breach in the geofence.

Gerhardus Theron, Vessel Manager of MV Mafuta, said: “Debmarine Namibia has a very clear aim of ‘zero harm’ across all our operations and we are constantly looking at ways of enhancing employee safety and especially around the heavy machinery required for diamond recovery operations. The initial engagement consultation and joint workshop with the team from Orange Business Services was very productive and quickly identified the potential for an IoT solution to ensure the wellbeing of personnel onboard the vessels. We quickly moved to a pilot phase, which has now confirmed the potential of this innovative approach that we could embed within our existing safety processes and procedures.”

Keith Matthews, Country Manager for South Africa, Orange Business Services, said: “This smart IoT solution developed with De Beers is a great example of innovating and co-creating with our customer. The geofencing pilot has already proved successful in one of the most challenging heavy industrial environments – a floating diamond mine at sea, with prolonged exposure to strong vibration and corrosive saltwater. The next phase of its development will aim to refine the interface and data collection capabilities and include testing a trigger function to deactivate machinery in the event of a breach of the geofence by a crew member.”

Previous Article

Miners welcome stance against ‘blatant corruption’ in ...

Next Article

SA mining through worst of Covid-19 production ...

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0

Micheal van Wyk

Related articles More from author

  • ProjectsTechnology

    China to accelerate work on iron ore projects in Australia and Africa

    January 5, 2021
    By Micheal van Wyk
  • Projects

    Approval of $259m Sandfire T3 Project proof Botswana is “new global copper province”

    December 2, 2020
    By Micheal van Wyk
  • MineralsProjects

    Zambia Eyes Bigger Role in Running Copper Mines

    January 8, 2021
    By Micheal van Wyk
  • Projects

    Zinc mining – giving back to people and planet

    October 15, 2020
    By Micheal van Wyk
  • BusinessProjects

    Ivanplats seeks $420m financing to develop South Africa’s Platreef mine

    February 18, 2021
    By Micheal van Wyk
  • Projects

    Kumba Iron Ore approves Kapstevel South project at Kolomela

    July 29, 2020
    By Micheal van Wyk

Leave a reply Cancel reply

You may be interested in

  • Local News

    South Africa’s mining industry prepares for R300 million Covid-19 vaccine rollout effort

  • International News

    Australia pushes to diversify rare earth supply chains

  • Projects

    EXCLUSIVE: CANADA’S FIRST QUANTUM WEIGHS $1 BILLION ZAMBIAN COPPER MINE EXPANSION – DOCUMENT

Watch

  • EnergyVideo's

    South Africa reveals recovery plan for mining and energy sector

    Government has tabled a recovery plan to restore business confidence, stimulate investments, safeguard and create jobs in the mining and energy sector. “The Mining and Energy Recovery Plan intends to ...
  • Video's

    The draft petroleum Bill, skills development and how SA can benefit from Mozambique’s LNG project

    Adrian Strydom, acting CEO at South African Oil and Gas Association chats to African Oil Week on the draft Upstream Petroleum Resource Development Bill, Integrated Resource Plan, skill development for ...
  • Video's

    Steel production likely to stagnate or decline this year, says Roskill

    https://cisp.cachefly.net/assets/articles/attachments/82191_2020-05-05_roskill.mp4
  • Video's

    South Africa’s economy dire in comparison to rest of Africa

      Dr Azar Jammine, Director and Chief Economist at Econometrix, highlights the economic disparity between South Africa, West Africa and East Africa and how this could be an opportunity for ...
  • EventsVideo's

    Good Chemistry at Mining Indaba

    Under the umbrella of the new AECI Mining pillar, AECI Mining Explosives (AEL Intelligent Blasting) and AECI Mining Chemicals (Senmin), will offer solutions that focus on the customer and their ...

Timeline

  • February 24, 2021

    SRK’s decade in DRC evolves to local ownership

  • February 24, 2021

    BIA Group to supply Furukawa & RTDrill brands across Central and West Africa for Euroforgroup

  • February 23, 2021

    Mozambique the next frontier in graphite production

  • February 22, 2021

    BASE Resources passes important resource milestones in Kenya

  • February 19, 2021

    Cable, components and critical space exploration

Find us on Facebook

About Us

Mining Focus Africa provides valuable information on minerals’, events, exploration, energy and mining developments throughout Africa. It reports on the continent’s renaissance in mining and market opportunities associated with it.

Published 4 times a year, Mining Focus Africa is also available as a value-adding Digital online platform including weekly newsletter, online subscription and quarterly E-magazine downloads.

  • Recent

  • Popular

  • Comments

  • SRK’s decade in DRC evolves to local ownership

    By Micheal van Wyk
    February 24, 2021
  • BIA Group to supply Furukawa & RTDrill brands across Central and West Africa for Euroforgroup

    By Micheal van Wyk
    February 24, 2021
  • Mozambique the next frontier in graphite production

    By Micheal van Wyk
    February 23, 2021
  • BASE Resources passes important resource milestones in Kenya

    By Micheal van Wyk
    February 22, 2021
  • The way that minerals are mined affects conflict in eastern Congo

    By Micheal van Wyk
    July 30, 2019
  • Miners welcome stance against ‘blatant corruption’ in South Africa

    By Micheal van Wyk
    August 31, 2020
  • Wafi-Golpu a ‘game-changer’ for growing South Africa miner

    By Micheal van Wyk
    December 7, 2020
  • East Africa mining boom spells doom for environment

    By Micheal van Wyk
    December 4, 2020
  • JAQLEE CONSTRUCTION COMMENCING
    on
    February 1, 2021

    Mota-Engil picks up mining contract at Vedanta’s Gamsberg mine

    Good Day. Would like ...
  • www.xmc.pl
    on
    January 31, 2021

    Shock resignation of AngloGold Ashanti CEO after less than two years

    Spot on with this ...
  • Edison Forbes
    on
    January 6, 2021

    Contact Us

    I think this is ...
  • หนังโป๊
    on
    January 4, 2021

    Miners welcome stance against ‘blatant corruption’ in South Africa

    Excellent article. I certainly ...

Contact Us

Head Office
5 The Ferns, 364 Pretoria Avenue, Randburg, South Africa, 2194

Tell : +27 67 212 7565
Fax: 086 678 6956
www.lothbrokmedia.com

Accounts
Info@lothbrokmedia.com

Zambia
33 Malata Road, Madras,Lusaka, Zambia 3928Tell:+ 26 76 136 3654
Email Info
Info@miningfocusafrica.com

 

  • Contact
  • Adverts
© Copyright www.miningfocusafrica.com. All rights reserved.
Please wait...

Subscribe to our newsletter

Want to be notified when our article is published? Enter your email address and name below to be the first to know.
SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER NOW