The Enaex Africa team set another record for the highest number of detonators (3 876 units) fired in a single blast in South Africa, using DaveyTronic detonators at United Manganese of Kalahari.

The average hole depth of the 1938 holes was 14 m, with two detonators per hole.

“While this is an incredible achievement, what was more important to the team involved is that we maintained our 100% safety record,” the company stated in a press release last month.

Enaex Africa CEO Francisco Baudrand commented: “Our number one value and priority at Enaex is life. The lives of our employees, customers, and stakeholders. “So even when we are executing massive blasts with thousands of detonators, firing lines, holes, and boosters, we take deep care of the safety of not just our employees but also our customers.”

He added that record-breaking feats can only be celebrated when all involved are safe.

“As was seen in Lebanon in August, the explosives industry and [its] products can be incredibly dangerous and so we ensure that we use the safest products and technologies,” he stated. He added that “the company is able to use its lengthy experience to ensure safety.”

Meanwhile, Enaex Africa, is in a joint venture with Sasol, leveraging the latter's bulk emulsion plant in Secunda and an ammonium nitrate fuelling plant in Rustenburg where it produces Expanfo. Sasol supplies ammonium nitrate prill and packaged explosives to the market. Its nonelectronic detonators and accessories are locally from SDN in Ekandustria.

Electronic detonators are typically sourced from an affiliate in France. Enaex (in association with Sasol) is the sole distributor of the DaveyTronic electronic detonators in Africa.

It produces and/or distributes a variety of high explosives and value-added solutions, providing all the products required to execute the entire blasting process, with several types of dynamite, boosters, emulsions, cartridge emulsions and conventional and electronic detonators, among others.

Meanwhile Enaex Africa and Sasol have reached out to the Limpopo Department of Education, to assist it with its Covid-19 response.

The companies donated and distributed 20 water tanks to schools around the Steelpoort and Burgersfort areas.

These 1 000 ℓ tanks were donated to assist with drought and water shortages in Limpopo. The companies also donated more than 3 100 ℓ of sanitiser.

Enaex Africa noted that, according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, two in five schools around the world lacked basic handwashing facilities prior to Covid-19 pandemic.

Many schools in South Africa are known to have inadequate facilities. Further, a key condition for schools to reopen was access to basic handwashing with soap and water.

The donation of these water tanks and hand sanitisers to the community schools in Limpopo through the provincial government will enable communities and learners to have access to proper hand hygiene, and water to clean the surfaces touched around the schools, to prevent Covid-19 transmission. It will also limit people’s and learners’ movements to water collection points.

Through this donation, Enaex Africa believes that it has made a, “small but meaningful difference,” not just in fighting the spread of Covid-19, but also in ensuring that the children in the communities where it has a presence will be able to continue to learn “despite the many challenges of 2020”.