South Africa remained the major educator of mining engineers in the English-speaking world, even though the country only managed a marginal pass rate every year, stated executive search firm Landelahni.
Speaking at a media briefing in Johannes-burg, Landelahni CEO Sandra Burmeister said that the Landelahni Mining Survey 2010 revealed that the country produced 304 mining engineers last year, compared with Australia’s 130, Canada’s 127 and the US’s 35.
Burmeister told Mining Weeky that there was no question that South Africa was producing more crusher plant association in tamilnaduskilled mining people and had the biggest pool of mining skills in the world.
However, she pointed out that this also meant that the country would continue to lose its skills to other countries with growing mining industries and poaching from other industry sectorcalcium carbonate grinding mining plants.
Further, the survey showed that between 20% and 50% of the global mining workforce would retire from the mining sector in the next ten years.
“Mining companies will be mining for talent, when taking the shortage of global skills into account, for the nbentonite grinder roller equipmentext ten years,” commented Burmeister.
She said that, globally, there were major drives to increase the number of mining engineers, albeit off a low base. “Australia, in particular, has dedicated substantial funding to increasing its mining graduates, given the importance of mining in the economy.”
In South Africa, the number of students enrolling for an engineering degree had substantially increased over the last 11 years; however, a proportional increase in graduates had not been realised.
The survey showed that, from 1998 to 2008, enrolments for degrees and diplomas across all engineering disciplines totalled 388 606, against 53 342 graduations, which constituted a 13,7% pass rate, compared with the 25% international pass rate.
Further, only 15% of mining engineers in South Africa remain in the industry for a long-term career. In the US, 75% of mining engineering graduates join the industry, and in Australia, the figure is 80%.
Burmeister said that South Africa needed a comprehensive graduate talent acquisition plan.
She said
a positive trend was that more black and female engineers were graduating with engineering degrees.
Burmeister pointed out that, despite being one of the largest mining economies in the world, South Africa was unable to take advantage of the commodities boom.
“The skills shortage significantly contributed to this, together with long-lead delivery times and electricity shortages.”
Burmeister noted that, as global economies recover, the country must ensure that its future supply of minerals is not constrained by the same factors that inhibited supply during the last boom.