The mining division specialises in surface contract mining.
Our approach is to ensure lasting benefits while minimising our impact on the natural environment.
Our primary focus is ensuring a safe and healthy workplace. Training is an integral part of this focus.
Basil Read is actively involved with South African transformation and broad-based black economic empowerment.
Our expanding footprint has presented challenges in managing our human resources
We strive to protect and sustain the environment, and to manage our impacts effectively, when these are unavoidable.
Basil Read strives to engage with meaningful initiatives that contribute to the transformation of people and communities.
Our reports scope, assurance process and standards used
The roads division focuses on earthworks, bridges, roads and highways, township infrastructure and rail.
Basil Read Roads, with its skilled teams, is a leader in high-profile road contracts in southern Africa.
In July 2014, Basil Read began placing the first of the 70 tonne concrete beams that make up the bridge linking two sides of Port Elizabeth across the N2 freeway. The R300 million Baywest road network is the largest project of its type in the Nelson Mandela Bay region in over 10 years and an integral part of the city’s economic growth under the municipality’s 2020 vision.
The double bridge, part of the long awaited Redhouse Chelsea arterial route, was specifically designed to reduce construction time while ensuring maximum safety for both contractor and road users during the construction period. Basil Read completed the bridge in record time.
The faster build meant N2 motorists were inconvenienced for a third of the usual time – four months instead of up to 12 months using conventional building methods. To reach this goal, the 12 beams (a total of 840 tonnes of concrete) making up the bridge were precast in a controlled area off site. They could then be laid six at a time, closing off each side of the N2 for just two months. Usually, the concrete is cast in place on site, with scaffolding under the bridge to support the slab while it cures, closing each side of the N2 for up to six months.
The added benefit of this system is that beams were cast in a special yard set up for casting concrete in controlled conditions. In the past, casting all the concrete in-situ meant it was exposed to the elements, making it more difficult to achieve tight tolerances. The project also required absolute precision – each 70 tonne beam could be out of position by no more than 10 mm when laid on the bridge bearings.
Some 230 employees worked hard to complete most of the network in time for Baywest Mall’s opening in March 2015. The new network will also reduce rush hour traffic in the city’s western suburbs.