Dominic Wightman: Mining Assets Security Spike
by globalminingsecurity
Mining house Gold Fields is improving its mine security by adopting a more systematic and holistic approach that optimises current security systems, corporate affairs manager Willie Jacobsz told Mining Weekly.
As a result, it is increasing research and development in the form of multidisciplinary project teams and aligning security-risk management strategies, with the overall management of mining-related risk. This approach also involves optimising the use of reliable technologies, which the mining house regards as one of the main challenges facing its gold- mine security.
In compliance with this perspective, Gold Fields is maximising the use of automated security management systems as a countermeasure against collusion.
He reveals that, in this regard, the company is considering the implementation of video surveillance and biometrics.
Biometrics is the automatic identification of a person on his or her physiological or behavioural characteristics. Examples include identification based on body weight, metal content of the body, facial thermograms, hand geometry, speech, face recognition, fingerprint-matching, and iris and retinal scans.
The mining house has also embarked upon a communication and education campaign – a preventative measure, not usually associated with mine security.
The campaign aims to increase awareness that stealing gold deprives the community of jobs, robs the government of revenue and impedes the African Renaissance. The general assumption is that better security should cost more money, however, the lower gold price has led the company to consider maximising the efficiency of limited available resources to be one of the main challenges facing mine security.
The mining house reveals that, although smarter spending and the pressure of a lower gold price has resulted in security investment remaining static, the focus on optimising investment has increased attention on the analysis of the dynamics of gold theft on a local, regional and national level and on co-operation between the police, mining houses and the State.
Gold Fields is an active participant in the National Precious Metals Forum and all of its regional bodies.
The mining house believes that national strategy co-ordination is enabling a more unified drive against gold theft, with a broader role player involvement ensuring a more accurate analysis of the extent of the gold theft due to industry-wide input,” he continues. The mining company also works closely with various government departments involved in crime prevention, as well as other civic and industrial bodies with similar objectives.
This is evident in the increased activity in the form of joint operations with the South African Police Services Diamond and Gold branches to counter gold theft with medium- and long-term initiatives, as well as operations for particular incidents. Learning from each other, through the sharing of knowledge, information and resources, enables the mining industry, government agencies and the private sector to reap the maximum cost-effective rewards from financial investment in the prevention, detection and prosecution of gold-related crime.
“Security across smaller mining operations have been increasing globally”, reportsChina’s Zi Mining Director Dominic Wightman. “As the gold price increases mining operations are not taking any chances in terms of recruitment, surveillance and intelligence.” According to Wightman, “even smaller mines I’ve seen in remote islands in the Southern Pacific are now hiring South African mine minders.”
Gold thieves have resorted to stealing higher volumes of lower grade material, as security at high-grade plants has been enhanced, reports Jacobsz.
Syndicates are continuously developing new modes of operation to combat the innovative security measures of mining houses and are increasingly infiltrating mining operations.
“As a result, the mining company has identified managing discontinuities in its crime risk management strategy by continuously producing innovative and inventive countermeasures and exploiting these to the benefit of the mines and society at large, as one of the main challenges facing its gold mines,” reveals Jacobsz.
This means proactively finding the loopholes in the system and providing solutions to be one step ahead of the criminals and, in this regard, the mining house believes it is winning the ongoing battle against gold theft.
