Johannesburg-headquartered dewatering specialist Letaba Dewatering expects to start supplying dewatering pumps to Shaft 7 at the Orkney gold mine, in the North West, in October, enabling gold mining to restart.

The company was provisionally awarded a tender to supply SAER dewatering pumps at the shuttered Orkney gold mine, owned by mining company China African Precious Metals (CAPM).

Letaba Dewatering sales engineer Leonard Appelgryn explains that the project is set to start in October.

He says the project is 15% complete, but is being delayed by safety and maintenance factors that are being considered before CAPM can start with the dewatering process.

The water that is to be removed will be sent to gold producer AngloGold Ashanti to be used as process water at a gold plant and then discharged to a surface tailings storage facility.

If CAPM starts dewatering as planned in October, Appelgryn notes that CAPM can start mining for gold by the end of October.

“Five years ago, CAPM bought Orkney in the hope of recommissioning it,” he explains.

Appelgryn says Letaba Dewatering is the sole distributor of several dewatering brands in South Africa, with SAER being one such brand.

SAER pumps are manufactured in Italy and were first launched in 1951. The pumps have been used in other countries on similar applications, but will be used for the first time in South Africa at Orkney, which was shut down after provisional liquidation in 2009.

Appelgryn states that the pumps are specifically used in the mining and irrigation industries to extract water from mine shafts or deep wells.

However, he adds that SAER pumps are not a conventional dewatering method, as mine dewatering is usually done in stages, while the SAER pump’s capacity allows 700 m of water to be extracted at a 90° upward angle, therefore, being capable of extracting large amounts of water.

“A large amount of water needs to be removed at the Orkney mine and the pump produces quite a bit of power to do so, making it one of the unique benefits of using [the product],” he says.

Letaba has supplied dewatering services in South Africa for 30 years.