scholarly journals Exploring the challenges associated with the greening of supply chains in the South African manganese and phosphate mining industry

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
R.I. David Pooe ◽  
Khomotso Mhelembe
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
South African ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
The South ◽  
Phosphate Mining ◽  
Phosphate Industry ◽  
Management Recommendations ◽  
And Control

As with most mining activities, the mining of manganese and phosphate has serious consequences for the environment. Despite a largely adequate and progressive framework for environmental governance developed since 1994, few mines have integrated systems into their supply chain processes to minimise environmental risks and ensure the achievement of acceptable standards. Indeed, few mines have been able to implement green supply chain management (GrSCM). The purpose of this article was to explore challenges related to the implementation of GrSCM and to provide insight into how GrSCM can be implemented in the South African manganese and phosphate industry. This article reported findings of a qualitative study involving interviews with 12 participants from the manganese and phosphate industry in South Africa. Purposive sampling techniques were used. Emerging from the study were six themes, all of which were identified as key challenges in the implementation of GrSCM in the manganese and phosphate mining industry. From the findings, these challenges include the operationalisation of environmental issues, lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing, proper application of monitoring and control systems,lack of clear policy and legislative direction, the cost of implementing GrSCM practices, and the need for strong leadership and management of change. On the basis of the literature reviewed and empirical findings, conclusions were drawn and policy and management recommendations were accordingly made.

scholarly journals The South African coal mining industry: A need for a more efficient and collaborative supply chain

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pooe ◽  
Kenneth Mathu
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Coal Mining ◽  
South African ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The South ◽  
Coal Mining Industry ◽  
Thermal Coal ◽  
Supply Chain Dynamics

It is estimated that about two-thirds of global coal is used for power generation and that, in the next 20 years, over 70% of the demand for coal will come from China and India. Coal accounts for approximately 41% of the world's electricity generation. Demand for thermal coal is influenced by factors that include availability, prices of competing products such as oil, gas and nuclear power, and the demand for electricity. The aim of this article is to provide an exposition of supply chain dynamics within the South African coal mining industry and to argue for a more efficient and collaborative supply chain. The authors attempt to investigate at local and global level, the current trends pertaining to the level of reserves, production and consumption of coal. The article further demonstrates the shortcomings of current logistics in meeting the demand for coal in both domestic and export markets. The article draws from secondary data sourced from academic papers, government and agency documents in the exposition of the coal mining supply chain. The paper concludes by recommending the need for a scientific study on supply chain constraints facing the coal mining industry in South Africa.

Scripting the Compound: Power and Space in the South African Mining Industry

1994 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Crush
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
The South ◽  
Cultural Resistance ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
And Control

In this paper the discursive construction of South Africa's quintessential institution of labour coercion and control—the mine compound—is explored. Popular and academic narratives of the origins, spread, and role of the compound are traced, with particular attention to the scripts of marxists, social historians, and poststructuralists. I argue that underlying each is a set of spatial images which powerfully constrains what is admissible to the narrative. Recent attempts to resituate the compound as a fluid ensemble of power geometries are highlighted through a review of the interior spatiality and cultural life of the compound and its connections to its immediate surrounds and the distant countryside. The aim is an empowering narrative which centres migrant cultural resistance and helps to explain the dramatic reordering of the mine landscape since the mid-1980s.

A study of cane supply benefits associated with ad hoc mechanical harvesting to mitigate cutter absenteeism

2013 ◽  
pp. 532-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Kadwa ◽  
Carel N Bezuidenhout
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
South African ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Sugar Mill ◽  
The South ◽  
Optimum Performance ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Cane Quality ◽  
The Cost

The Eston Sugar Mill is the newest in the South African KwaZulu-Natal sugar belt. Like most other mills, it can be argued that there are inefficiencies in the supply chain due to systematic issues, which reduce optimum performance. It was alleged that mill processes are slowed, or stopped, on Sundays, Mondays, as well as some Tuesdays and Wednesdays, due to pay-weekends, because of the associated cutter absenteeism. This increases the length of the milling season (LOMS), increases milling costs and reduces the average cane quality for the season. Data on cane deliveries to the Eston Mill, over a period of five seasons, were analysed to study the magnitude of the problem. It was statistically verified that cane shortages occur immediately after payweekends and it was conservatively estimated that cutter absenteeism occurs between 25–29 days per season, which increases the LOMS by six to ten days. The associated cost of this problem equated to an average of US$159,500 (approximately EUR120,000) per milling season. In this paper, an alternative harvesting system scenario is suggested, assuming that mechanical harvesters be used after a pay-weekend, to mitigate the impacts of cutter shortages. However, the solution is calculated to be risky. When the cost of new equipment was considered, only two of the five seasons were able to justify the associated costs.

Supply chain management challenges in the South African public sector

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (44) ◽  
pp. 11003-11014 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Ambe Intaher ◽  
A Badenhorst Weiss Johanna
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chain Management ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
South African ◽  
The South ◽  
Chain Management

The use of elongate support in the South African Mining Industry

2018 ◽  
pp. 343-347
Author(s):  
F.J. Glisson ◽  
D.H. Kullmann ◽  
A.E. Vidal da Silva
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
The South

Mozambican Labour Regimes and the Eastern Main Line

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Charles van Onselen
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Main Line ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
The South ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Line P ◽  
Voluntary Basis ◽  
Low Wages

The South African mining industry profited from the slave- and forced-labour regimes that preceded it in the adjacent Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Many of the earliest migrants were part of a labour force ‘recruited’ through coercion. Black Mozambicans later preferred to work as cheap, indentured migrant labourers rather than face working for no or low wages in their own country. The chapter explains how this helped underpin the illusion that black labour was somehow free, mobile and voluntary. But as southern Mozambique became progressively more underdeveloped economically, the need to coerce black labour became less necessary and the system was said to be operating on a wholly voluntary basis as part of an economy dominated by ‘market forces’.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 184-198
Author(s):  
Charles van Onselen
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
The South ◽  
Rail Network ◽  
Forced Labour

Black Mozambicans consistently resisted the oppressive labour regime that used steam locomotives and the rail network to deliver them as indentured labourers to the South African mining industry. Some used the system to transport them to the best labour markets and then deserted to find other, better employment. The railways formed an integral part of a highly coercive system of industrial exploitation and, in that, differed from other historical situations where transport systems were used to further genocidal agendas. Yet, so deeply traumatic were the rail journeys to and from the mines that they became incorporated into the modern witchcraft beliefs of Africans which speak of trains without tracks and the recruitment of workers for forced labour in a zombie workforce. The scarring caused by the Night Trains is still with us, whether in songs, such as Stimela, or in witchcraft beliefs that reflect death through over-work at sub-subsistence wages.

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