AFRISAM PRIORITISING QUALITY AMID TOUGH TIMES FOR CONSTRUCTION SECTOR

Cement, ready-mix concrete and aggregates company
AfriSam is focusing on producing high-quality cements, concretes and
aggregates, as well as offering a timely, reliable service to clients, amid
difficult economic and construction-sector times, says AfriSam construction
materials North regional manager Zielas
du Preez.

AfriSam took journalists on a tour of its Jukskei
granite quarry, in Midrand, which was founded in a rural setting in the 1950s
but operates in a built-up and fast-developing area since 2016, to showcase its
quality control, safety and environmental protection initiatives.

The company highlighted the measures and
precautions it takes to ensure that dust and noise are within compliance
levels, as well as blasting technology and techniques used to control the
vibrations and mitigate any danger during blasts.

Water from the base of the quarry is used to
suppress dust on haulage roads. This drains back into the quarry; water
sprayers in crushing equipment reduce dust liberation, and initiatives to
reduce noiseare in place.

The quarry is next to a busy helicopter pad, and it
sends communiques to warn of potential dust and when a no-fly zone is in place
above the quarry while a blast is carried out. Similarly, the Jukskei quarry
team communicates constantly with all the stakeholders and building managers of
its neighbours, which include industrial warehouses and corporate offices.

Further, mine engineers have worked to finish
mining on the northern faces that are nearest to its neighbours. Quarrying will
proceed mainly in an easterly direction to limit the impact on neighbours from
blasting.

“We use electronic blasting technology, which,
while more expensive than conventional blasting technologies, enables us to
simulate and then design blasts to ensure that vibrations are kept well below specific
limits,” says Du Preez.

The company adheres to US blast management and
consulting standards, and all its operations are managed in accordance with ISO
9001 quality management standards.

Further, the company takes precautions to limit fly
rocks and noise generation during blasting, such as placing materials in and on
top of blast holes – called stemming – and digitally simulating blasts to
verify blast designs and expected parameters, which helps it to control blasts
and their impacts.

The Jukskei site also has two ready-mix plants,
which supply developments in Sandton and Midrand, as well as the Gauteng
region, says AfriSam North and Central operations manager Kevin Naidoo.

He showcased the technical accuracy of the
ready-mix batch plants, as well as the controls to ensure that the correct
ratios of ingredients and additives according to the engineer’s specifications
are mixed and dispatched for clients.

AfriSam has a central fleet management and control
room to ensure that the trucks are loaded and dispatched to clients timeously,
as well as to manage any client delays and ad hoc requests.

AfriSam Ready-Mix Gauteng, North West and
Mpumalanga regional manager Russell
Wearne notes the importance of the company’s ready-mix operations to
use cement and aggregates from its operations.

“Market conditions are currently severely
depressed. We can produce more than four-million cubic metres a year of
ready-mix, but we are producing far less at the moment.”

AfriSam is focusing on ensuring reliable supply of
high-quality products during the tough times. It has proven capabilities to do
specialised mixes to meet demanding project specifications, such as the PwC
tower in Waterfall City, in Midrand, which required that the concrete be poured
into shuttering that was continuously raised to build the central tower, he
says.

“Our in-house research and development capabilities
stand us in good stead to develop specialised mixes required by civil
engineers, developers and mining houses, and we are a preferred supplier for
most of the regional large-scale developments.

Pricing wars will only lead to poor-quality products and projects, and AfriSam is focused on ensuring that we develop our personnel’s technical skills in preparation for when development accelerates again,” concludes Wearne. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/afrisam-focuses-on-quality-amid-constrained-quantity-2019-11-15