Diverse mineral supplier OMV on September 9 launched its new Valkenburgh milling facility at its plant in Witbank, Mpumalanga.

The company’s Witbank’s site was previously a storage and trans fill operation of bentonite and has now been expanded to process and mill industrial minerals.

The facility, which is already operational and has already been commissioned several times, will mill myriad minerals including sodium bentonite, dolomite, calcite limestone, calcium bentonite, magnesite and magnesium carbonate, OMV Stilfontein operations manager Rousseau van der Merwe explained to Engineering News on the sidelines of the launch.

Van der Merwe is the project engineer responsible for ensuring the flexibility of the facility to mill a variety of products, which entails implementing fine tuning control for the mill itself and ensuring it has the capability to change the process of operation to achieve this.

OMV procured key unit operations, including the mill itself, from Chinese-based SBM, which specialises in crushing and milling operating units and provides turnkey solutions. The other ancillary components were locally designed and manufactured.

The site also has an on-site process control lab, which is being used to beneficiate some minerals.

OMV was acquired by infrastructure development and construction materials supply company the Raubex Group in 2014, and its support has assisted in pursuing this new mill.

The company developed the new mill to bolster its supply of sodium bentonite products, with Samancor being a major customer.

Van der Merwe highlighted that having the mill in the Mpumalanga region provides a strategic advantage, as it is close to the ferrochrome industry, and is well positioned for several of the company’s industrial clients who require different milled materials.

The Valkenburg facility will also complement the company’s other milling facility in Olifantsfontein, which mills industrial minerals including gypsum, limestone, dolomite, attapulgite, magnesite and bentonite.