As it celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, South Africa-based specialist mining services provider Ukwazi is broadening its reach throughout Africa and the Middle East. 

The company attributes its sustainability to its focus on organic leadership, its unique organisational design based on highly efficient expert teams with a set of relevant, core competencies that have continued to add value to its clients’ operations over the years. Ukwazi strongly believes that its unique organisational design gives it a significant advantage. It facilitates project teams based on a matrix of expert super teams to cater for the scope and requirements of each new project the company embarks on. 

“This way, our company is not focussed on the individual, but on groupings of super teams that consist of permanent members. This not only makes the project teams efficient from the start but allows for unique opportunities for personal growth and development of our staff. It puts them in a position where they work permanently with the members of the super team that they were chosen to be part of,” explains Ukwazi director and business development manager Spencer Eckstein.

He adds that most startups do not manage to survive beyond the first 18 months, let alone navigate significant local and global crises, such as the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic and cyclical commodity prices, to emerge 20-years-strong. 

“Consequently, there’s a level of resilience in our organisation, which operates in a highly competitive industry.” 

Notably, to ensure Ukwazi’s continued success, the company has employed a diversification strategy, introducing additional services and capacity over the years to allow it to fully function as a one-stop advisory service provider to the mining industry. 

Formed in 2004, Ukwazi, the Zulu word for “to know”, was focused mainly on mine planning, and subsequently reinforced this offering with the addition of a site services team, whereby qualified specialists are co-located on clients’ sites to provide planning, design and execution support in the mining production environment, and to be part of the  construction team that materialises the mines designed by Ukwazi.  

“This service was introduced in about 2007 and was followed by the establishment of an engineering division, which focuses on surface and underground engineering infrastructure; the creation of a sustainable mining team that concentrates on environmental, social and governance (ESG) in 2019; and the development of teams that assist with mining project financial valuations and due diligence, transaction advisory and public reporting,” elaborates Eckstein.

Ukwazi’s general approach to navigating the current global economic downturn involves “following our clients to the mining jurisdictions in which they want to operate”. These regions include West, Central and East Africa and, to some extent, the Middle East, where the company is about to embark on a significant polymetal project. 

“Our strategy, historically, is to focus on friendly time zones in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly, that vary by less than four hours compared with South Africa to enable faster response times when dealing with clients. Although our organisational design and experts allow us to have internal skills on all relevant mining methods and styles of mineralisation, we apply great care to only focus on those core services that are relevant to our expertise,” states Eckstein.

Mining Movement

He highlights that there is a lot more activity throughout West, East and Central Africa. In particular Zambia has attracted significant interest and investment, which was evident at this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba, hosted at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in February. 

Ukwazi mainly attributes this improved sentiment toward Zambia to its more investor-friendly stance, but also to the increased global demand for copper and cobalt.

The company is accustomed to traversing obstacles synonymous with operating in Africa – water scarcity or overabundance, intermittent electricity supply and logistics constraints.

“Most mining operations either have too little or too much water, and either extreme can be problematic. Power is also a major issue. Like South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia have power challenges. Electricity supply is always an issue for mines, particularly for operations that must power energy-intensive equipment such as concentrators, smelters, electrowinning plants,” explains Eckstein.

However, while Zambia gives preference to miners when it comes to power supply, Ukwazi’s platinum group metals clients operating in Zimbabwe have experienced power supply challenges. But power supply in Zambia can also vary according to the specific mine and their agreement with the Zambian government, notes Eckstein.

Logistics is also critical as it could constitute more than 20% of the local costs, he highlights. Therefore, the longer the logistics chain, owing to distance or capacity limitations, the more the production cost of the saleable product increases, putting additional pressure on the profitability of the operation. 

“We try to ensure that our core disciplines around mine planning and engineering, but also in terms of valuation, and so forth, are supported by extensive skills. That’s why we can overcome the challenges presented by African mining jurisdictions to deliver the high-quality projects we do,” advances Eckstein.

Key to Effective Project Management

While Ukwazi is a specialist in all relevant mining methods and commodities, the company has also evolved its integrated project management and associated project controls to focus on the deliverables and take a lump-sum approach rather than an approach which requires continuous variation orders to accommodate project changes. This is in addition to being thorough in the project cost and schedule estimates.

“To a significant extent, mining advisory services have become commodified over time. We try to differentiate ourselves by ensuring that our clients have a positive experience when working with our teams, that we’re easy to work with and set up our project teams in a manner that provides clients with direct access to each of our small expert super teams. We are also flexible and accommodating to our clients’ way of working, as opposed to being set in our ways,” says Eckstein.

Moreover, Ukwazi ensures that it manages its clients’ expectations appropriately throughout the process by communicating well and in advance. 

The company is also focused on being software agnostic, using the software programs and tools that its clients have adopted and does not prescribe software solutions for particular project types or applications.

“In addition, we aim to assign a matrix of super teams with the right level of experience and depth of industry know-ledge to effectively manage projects with the client to foster partnerships, rather than have a relationship where it’s us and them,” adds Eckstein.

Further, the company has assisted major bulk commodity producers operating in sub-Saharan Africa with ESG, closure design and estimation, as well as water management and rehabilitation of mine residue deposits. 

“We’re particularly proud of our involvement in helping mining companies transition from open pit to underground mining operations, which is expected to become a major trend going forward. Tailings retreatment is another growing trend, with wet mining methods becoming more and more problematic for responsible mining organisations,” states Eckstein, further emphasising the number of shareholder reports Ukwazi has produced for JSE-listed companies, in particular.

While the world is full of uncertainty at present regarding planning for the next 20 years, Eckstein says Ukwazi has the right platforms and foundations to meet an indeterminate future and to navigate uncertainty in the mining environment. 

“We would like to be the partner of choice for mining companies in this space, particularly to provide multidisciplinary studies and projects for our clients. Our focus is to remain cost competitive, but also ensure that we compete from a talent and from a capability perspective, and that we keep delivering projects and advisory services that exceed our clients’ expectations.”

Ukwazi is focussed on maintaining a culture where its staff enjoy working with and for the company and its clients. 

“This is an important pillar that we feel makes us distinctive. We also endeavour to remain up to date with the industry’s impending technological changes. Artificial intelligence is going to have an impact on mining. The shape and content of that may still be a little further down the road, but it’s coming, and we need to be aware of it, plan for it and determine how it should be integrated and when and how it should be used. We remain a proudly South African company with local roots, and we are growing organically into sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East,” concludes Eckstein.