Leading mine blasting solutions provider BME today announced a new alignment with Protea Mining Chemicals, which provides one point of contact for two solutions through the BME brand.

In this regard, Mining Weekly put these questions to Ralf Hennecke, the managing director of BME, an Omnia group company. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

In what respects will the alignment of BME and Protea Mining Chemicals offer a more comprehensive value proposition to global customers?

Firstly, the global mining trend, as we need to acknowledge, is really going into more outsourcing of services, like explosives, drilling, chemicals and so forth, and the mining industry in general is relying quite heavily on contractors to transfer skills and knowledge to themselves and to the rest of the industry. So, the alignment between explosives and the chemicals business plays directly into the hands of what we are trying to achieve. This solution offering will contribute greatly to the mining value chain, with the one being a rock-breaking solution, and the other being a minerals processing and minerals liberation solution. Ultimately, those two practices are a little bit intertwined. If we think about blast results and leading up to mineral liberation processes, the better you blast, the easier it is to liberate the mineral at the end of the day, or the easier it is to push the product, or the blasted material, through to the plant. This is not only a change in value proposition for the mining industry in general. It is a value proposition for our own people as well, and it is leading to being an employer of choice, because now the explosives engineers are learning about chemical processing, and the metallurgists are learning a little bit about blasting rock, and how those things are intertwined, so it really helps our company to become an employer of choice.

What safety protocols are paramount when BME Blasting Solutions provides customers with explosives and detonator offerings?

As we all know, safety is paramount, and is a ticket to the game today. It falls squarely into the ESG drive in our industry as well. We offer solutions for the entire product base now, the cost of ownership of our products, and living the life cycle of our products from not only blasting, but also liberalisation of the mineral at the end of the day. Safety in itself, talks to the basics. Today, you cannot live as a miner or as a contractor in our ESG environment without doing the basics right. Safety falls squarely into that. Supply chain security, quality of products, processes, trust in people, application protocols, and in all of those stages and in all of those characteristics that you need to offer the mining industry today, you need to be safe, not only in your own practices and what you're good at, but in today's mining game, you need to be the eyes and ears of your customers and give advice to their own operations and live in that ecosystem of mining production in general.

What hallmarks will BME Metallurgy uphold when it goes about providing mining chemicals and metallurgical solutions to the world?

First of all, having the metallurgists and specialists on the mine who understand the products, who understand the processes, and, most importantly, understand the customer needs. We have fit-for-purpose solutions for the mines. Just to give you an example, we offer chemical products to the mining industry at specific chemical concentrations that are optimised for their processing results or for their geology and their rock in order to liberate the minerals. You get different concentrations of products, and only by living on the mine and living in the space of the customer, can you understand and tweak what the customer ultimately would like to achieve. But we take the whole chemical side and explosive side one step further. Specifically on the chemical side, what we offer the customer is safety solutions from a handling, storage and chemical application p...