With more gold in the ground than has been mined in the last 100 years, the South African gold mining industry has a great opportunity to modernise, introduce a social and economic compact, loudly condemn the errant behaviour of the past and eliminate the trust deficit. That point is made loudly and clearly on page 6 of this edition of Mining Weekly, where Chamber of Mines VP and Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman states unequivocally that South African gold mining faces wipe-out if it fails to adapt to new imperatives. But, conversely, if prepared to change meaningfully, a staggeringly high volume of gold is still there for the taking.

For the mining industry to grow, South Africa needs to expand its rail and port networks. That is the strong message from Anglo American South Africa deputy chairperson Norman Mbazima, who, pleasingly, said that all this is needed “urgently”, which is a word that has fallen out of the South African dictionary. Read on page 9 of this edition of Mining Weekly of new infrastructure being important to bring back investment. He is correct to observe that most of the world’s large infrastructure projects have taken place when governments risk investing in infrastructure to encourage investment, or when governments put regulations in place to allow the private sector to do so. Public–private partnerships are popping up increasingly as enablers of infrastructure development. Mbazima emphasised the urgency by calling for an immediate dialogue for the sake of growth and competitiveness. Companies, encouraged by new political winds blowing and the better time in the commodi- ties cycle, do not want to lose out on the next upturn the same way that they lost out on the last one.

Ivanhoe Mines executive chairperson and founder Robert Friedland is confident that fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) will have the upper hand against battery electric vehicles, a point he makes very clear on page 12 of this edition of Mining Weekly. His prediction is unambiguous: the fuel cell will replace the pure electric vehicle. He is also convinced that this will be clearest cut in cold climates as a consequence of FCEVs being exothermic. “Unless you want to burn newspapers in the backseat to stay warm, when you turn that electric heater on in a pure electric car, you drain the battery” is his biting comment. Pictures of fuel cell cars flashed onto the main stage screen at last week’s Mining Indaba gave one confidence that steady progress is being made on the FCEV front and that this is dovetailing well with the hydrogen infrastructure that is being provided in Germany, Japan and California. China is expected to provide the scale needed lower FCEV costs, which will be a major boost for platinum, the only metal able to play the catalysis role that is needed. FCEVs use compressed hydrogen gas that, when combined with oxygen and drawn through an electrolyte, creates electricity, which powers the car and emits only water vapour.