By Sharyn Macnamara
Mining and Technical Exhibitions (MTE) launched its new MTE 2025 expo calendar at the recent Electra Mining Africa 2024.
© Mining and Technical Exhibitions (MTE)
“Electra Mining Africa 2024 is always the perfect platform to launch our calendar as the event talks to the mining, electrical, automation, power and transport industries in its 5-in-1 interconnected expo – all the industries MTE’s travelling high impact expo philosophy talks to, but differently, taking innovation to the doorstep of the mining, power, construction, logistics and paper and pulp industries,” says Macnamara, operations director at MTE. “High impact, media affiliated trade shows – customised to commodity and operation requirements in an industrial area with secured operational buy-in – are the order of the day for MTE.
“Again, in 2024 we broke several of our own company records when it comes to supplier support and visitor attendance – the Northern Cape, Rustenburg, Zondereinde and Ngodwana being cases in point. Our SADC expos were also great success, and Zimbabwe was back on schedule with a bang this year – so we will revisit these areas in 2025, but we are adding some new areas of interest into the mix next year.”
What’s new in 2025?
The new MTE 2025 calendar promises to take the exhibitor to the heart of the mines again, and other industries too in key areas in SADC with another 25 well thought-out and co-ordinated destinations. Other than the bigger expos in major mining towns, MTE has gone back to its roots – hosting onsite expos for specific mines, targeting and providing key requested innovations and solutions.
Brits beckons
Next year, Brits will be a new focus area for MTE. Situated in the North West Province of South Africa, Brits is an important platinum producing area in the mining sector with 94% of the country’s platinum mined in the Rustenburg and Brits districts. Together, these areas produce more platinum than any other single area in the world and Eland mine, Dikwena Chrome (DCR) and Crocodile River Mine are major players.1
Eland, a primary producer of platinum group metals (PGMs) and part of the Northam Platinum Limited group, is a shallow hybrid UG2 mine. With a LOM of 30 years, two different mining methods are undertaken at the mine at two sections – underground mining at Elandsfontein and opencast mining at Zilkaatsnek. During 2022, the acquisition of the neighbouring Maroelabult mine from Eastplats was concluded, immediately following which re-equipping and development commenced.2 Eland hosts a shallow, UG2 orebody containing 14.4-million ounces of platinum, palladium rhodium and gold, (4E) resources and 3.2-million ounces of mineral reserves.3
Dikwena Chrome (DCR) is close to Western Chrome Mines (WCM). Samancor Chrome acquired the operation in 2029, and its core business is the production of charge chrome using four closed SAFs, a metal recovery plant, and two Pellet and Sintering Plants (PSP).4
Crocodile River Mine (CRM) is a shallow long-life hybrid PGMs mine is located within the Brits Graben, where the UG2 typically consists of a single chromite layer some 1.35m to 1.5m thick. It comprises an operating reclaiming section on the tailings dam, Zandfontein underground operation, two development sections, Crocette and Kareespruit; and several processing plants. 5 The initial phase, “soft start”, of the underground operation was announced fully operational on March 6, 2024.
Visitor benefits
Macnamara emphasises, “I visit the mines on a regular basis, throughout the year to meet with management and consult on what solutions would suit their operational requirements, and very importantly, to attain buy-in for a trade show at a particular time of the year. This secures the support of the right decision-maker/visitor for our shows and the correct content for our customised expos. Marketing, including special VIP invites, starts at least five weeks ahead of the expo to inform the market of the event.”
The exhibitions are hosted near the operations in the area or – in the case of the smaller, more intimate shows actually on site – making the shows more accessible to decision makers with busy schedules. In 2025, MTE has added the Kusasalethu, Mponeng and Doornkop mine-site-specific expos – tailored content according to the engineering requirements of surrounding operations, or that particular operation, at the time are included in the content of the expo to make the visit worthwhile. These ‘high-impact’ expos are traditionally run for four hours, usually 1pm-5pm allowing the visitor enough time to see all the technology in action through demos at the exhibition, end-to-end, before he/she leaves.
MTE’s 30 years in the industry has enabled the company to fine-tune its offering to what works for both visitor and exhibitor. “There have been many changes over the years after tracking the trends in the industry and taking heed of the feedback from both exhibitors and visitors, and we have adjusted and transformed our business accordingly. This fact together with our strong relationships built on a ‘boots on the ground, face-to-face’ strategy have stood us in good stead,” says Macnamara.
Visit https://mteexpos.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/MTE_Calendar_2025_Digital.pdf to access the new calendar or contact Andrew Macnamara on +27 (0) 82 720 0083 for more information.
References:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brits,_South_Africa
- https://miningdataonline.com/property/1165/Eland-Mine.aspx
- https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/print-version/eland-mine-complex-south-africa-update-2023-04-14
- https://samancorcr.com/business_unit/dikwena-chrome/
- https://www.eastplats.com/what-we-do/crocodile-river-mine/