Phalaborwa – a Limpopo town located near the confluence of the Ga-Selati and the Olifants river – is close enough to the Kruger National Park that elephants sometimes cause traffic jams in the town. It is also home to Palabora Copper, an enormous open-cast mine – at almost 2 000m wide, it is Africa’s widest man-made hole.
Opencast mining has been replaced by a large-scale underground operation that will extend the life of mine considerably. Most of South Africa’s copper is mined in Phalaborwa.
Palabora Mining Company (PMC) is one of the operating mines in the area and has numerous operations including a concentrator, smelter, refinery and vermiculite operations. The underground operation produces about 80 000t of copper a year. The mine is shaped in a block-cave, with the cave reaching 450m. Ore extracted from the mine is conveyed to a converter where crushing, milling and flotation takes place. The ore then goes through additional processing in the form smelting and refining. PMC has also made significant investment in the Lift II project, which is expected to expand the life of mine to ensure that it continues until 2033.
