Background  

 ASA Metals has started during January 2008 wiht an extensive development program to increase their ferrochrome production capacity with 300%.  This development program, called Project Sunrise, included the design and construction of a 600 000 ton per annum Palletising and Sintering Plant as well as two 66 MVA close furnaces each with its own pre-heaters.

The Pelletising and Sintering plant was commissioned on the 2nd of July 2009 and produced the first sintered pellets ont he 12thof July 2009.  It is envisaged that the first Furnace will be commissioned towards the middle of August 2009 and that the second furnace will be commissioned by the end of October 2009 well within the time schedule, budget and safety objectives.

The Sunrise team is exceptionally proud of their safety achievements of which the most import one is the achievement of 3.5 million lost time injury free hours and are still going strong to increase this to over 4 million.  This is an excellent achievement if one considers that there were more that 2800 construction workers on site during the peak times of which more than 35% came from the local communities.

SHEQ Stats

LTIF was 306 697 when the first and only lost time injury accurse.  One employee were caring a beam and walking backwoods and tripped over another piece of metal and broke his angle.
The total hours for project as on 26/07/2009 were 920 745
The total project sunrice LTHF is 3 484 910
All our scrubbers in the process is wet scrubbers which will have a positive impact on our environment.

Training

The management team attended a three week training course in Finland.  They compiled their own training modules and provided training to all controllers as well as all the field attendants.

Appointments

The total complement is 72 people consisting of:
Controllers = 16 people
Field attendants  = 20 people
Production Foreman = 4 people
Artisans Assistants = 12 people
Other = 8 people

Production Appointments

Local appointment were 82% and non locals 18%
Out of the 70% were men an 30% women
All appointments Africans
Engineering Appointments
Local appointments 9% and non locals 91% (Artisans)
Local appointments 100% (Artisan Assistants)
African appointment 59% and Whites 41%

Start Up

The erection of the first structure took place on the 7 August 2008.  It took us 338 days up to the date of the first pellet production.  We started the heat-up on 2 July 2009 and the first pellets were produced on 12 July at 12h12. The heat-up took us 45 minutes short of 10 days.
The total team were involve during the commissioning of the plant.  The design of the plant is 600 000 tons per annum.  No project were stopped because of the market conditions, in fact new contract were signed and upgrade of the Ben plant was also added.  The company built 28 new houses in Montaganeng.