Transalloys produces Sillicomanganese for world markets. The plant is owned by Renova Mining Industries, a Russian company that invested in South Africa in 2007. Renova has a share in the UMK manganese mine situated in the Kalahari, from where the ore is sourced for conversion to Silicomanganese.. The plant is situated 14 km West of eMalahleni and approximately 90 Km East of Pretoria.

Production capacity is approximately 170 000 tonnes of Sillicomanganese per annum. This figure has increased dramatically during the past 4 years, as a result of a concerted effort by our employees to increase efficiencies and performance.

The standard grade Silicomanganese contains 15.5 to 16.5% of silicon, 65 to 67% of manganese and a maximum of 2% carbon. SiMn is used, inter alia as a grain refiner and for de-oxidation in the steel manufacturing process.

Our Vision is to become a benchmark in the Manganese alloy industry through our people, flexibility and pursuing results. We aim to achieve this by adhering to our values of integrity, excellence, teamwork and commitment.

Operations

Transalloys utilises 5 submerged arc furnaces to produce SiMn.

The submerged arc furnaces comprise of two 48 MVA semi-closed furnaces and three 18 MVA open furnaces. Raw materials are fed from a common raw material handling system into three sets of day bins, from where the individual furnace recipes are batched and conveyed into the furnace bins.

The furnaces are tapped at regular intervals and the alloy is separated from the slag before being cast into layer casting beds. After a cooling down period of ± 3 days, the material is removed from the casting beds and fed into a crushing and screening plant. The different size fractions are separated and stockpiled or dispatched to ports for export, or collected by local customers.

• [Editor:Yueleilei]