ENVIRONMENT

De Beers marks new safety record

The De Beers Canada Exploration team has gone six years without a lost time injury

Staff reporter
The De Beers exploration team in Canada

The De Beers exploration team in Canada

This achievement came despite the fact that the team members often work in remote and inhospitable terrain, dealing with swamps and heavy brush, and sometimes packing heavy equipment as they undertake geological mapping, claim staking, sediment sampling, bulk sampling, ground and airborne geophysics, core drilling and sample processing.

De Beers as a whole recorded safety improvements in 2016. The group’s total recordable case frequency rate (all types of incidents) was 0.41 versus the target of 0.45, a 23% improvement on the previous year.

The lost time injury (LTI) frequency rate was 0.09, a 36% improvement on the previous year’s performance of 0.14. Thirty-one LTIs were recorded, against 53 in 2015.

In Canada, Julie Kong, senior exploration manager for De Beers, said: “The exploration team has a strong safety culture. We instil this culture to our extended ‘family’ during our projects. It is important that everyone returns safely at the end of the day.”

Project manager John Delgaty listed effective and timely communication, managers actively participating with each team member in the office and field, pre-field training workshops, and close relationships with contractors as being among the keys to the team’s success.

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the mining sector, brought to you by the Mining Magazine Intelligence team.

A growing series of reports, each focused on a key discussion point for the mining sector, brought to you by the Mining Magazine Intelligence team.

editions

ESG Mining Company Index: Benchmarking the Future of Sustainable Mining

The ESG Mining Company Index report provides an in-depth evaluation of ESG performance of 61 of the world's largest mining companies. Using a robust framework, it assesses each company across 9 meticulously weighted indicators within 6 essential pillars.

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Exploration Report 2024 (feat. Opaxe data)

A comprehensive review of exploration trends and technologies, highlighting the best intercepts and discoveries and the latest initial resource estimates.

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Future Fleets Report 2024

The report paints a picture of the equipment landscape and includes detailed profiles of mines that are employing these fleets

editions

Mining Magazine Intelligence Digitalisation Report 2023

An in-depth review of operations that use digitalisation technology to drive improvements across all areas of mining production