Cementation Africa fleet strategy: project control and capex lessons for mine engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Strategic fleet management at Cementation Africa is being used to control shaft sinking and underground development schedules by matching a dedicated fleet of raiseborers, LHDs and utility vehicles to project-specific demands. Manager Engineering Arthur Adams says the contractor keeps key assets in-house, supported by its own engineering workshops and component rebuild capability, while selectively hiring specialist equipment to avoid overcapitalisation. The approach is aimed at shortening mobilisation times between deep-level shaft projects, improving equipment availability, and tightening cost control on high-intensity sinking campaigns.
Technical Brief
- Strategic fleet is dimensioned around deep-level shaft sinking cycles rather than generic underground production profiles.
- Cementation Africa’s engineering workshops handle full component strip, inspection and rebuild to OEM tolerances in‑house.
- Standardisation of raiseborers, LHDs and utility carriers reduces spares inventory complexity across multiple concurrent projects.
- Rapid reconfiguration of fleets between shaft sinking, station development and equipping phases limits idle heavy plant.
- In-house engineering teams adapt machines with project-specific safety features, such as additional guarding and emergency egress systems.
- Condition-based maintenance regimes are applied to critical assets, using component life tracking to schedule rebuilds.
- Workshop capability allows refurbishment of ageing units instead of new capital purchase, extending fleet economic life.
- Similar contracting models in mining increasingly rely on owned core fleets with selectively hired niche equipment.
Our Take
Within our 554 Mining stories, contractor-focused pieces like this one on Cementation Africa are relatively few compared with mine-owner case studies, signalling growing editorial attention on how service providers’ fleet strategies influence project outcomes.
Among the 1,065 Projects/Product-tagged items, most product coverage centres on OEMs rather than underground contractors, so a fleet management angle here suggests Cementation Africa is positioning its internal systems as a differentiator when bidding for complex development work.
For African underground projects, strategic fleet management by contractors such as Cementation Africa typically affects not only safety and utilisation but also how flexibly owners can phase sinking and development, which can be critical where funding is staged or orebody knowledge is still evolving.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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