Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: Gold, which is fetching record prices, is being recovered at low cost from mine dumps on Gauteng’s West Rand.

Creamer: Since 1800s, we have been mining gold here, and the gold dumps are all over the place. Pan African has gone on to the West Rand at Mogale and it is going to take out that gold at such a low cost; gold recovery from the dumps is going to cost less than $900 an ounce.

When you see the gold price flying through the roof, you realise that this is the time to do recover gold from our many dumps, because it is just a win-win-win. Not only are you getting that gold out of those dumps, but you are removing the dumps. You are releasing the land beneath the dumps for other development. The residue materials you are left with also have a place to go. They are taked underground were disused mines remain a grave danger.

We know people are still going under there, they are trying to mine under there, which is very dangerous. Pan African is going to take that residue and fill all those tunnels so people cannot get in there. I think it is time that we really went big into getting the gold out of all of the many dumps that still surround us in Gauteng, the province of gold.

Kamwendo: Projects to recover chrome ore and platinum metals from tailings dams are under way in North West province.

Creamer: This is a similar thing where you have got dumps from platinum and chrome mining in areas like Rustenburg, in North West. There is wealth on those dumps and for some reason, people seem to be able to get licences to recover metals from these disused dumps far quicker than they can for mining.

They’re moving in now with the chrome price high. We have got Sylvania moving in there, getting the chrome out of those dumps, people getting employed, and wealth being extracted from these dumps. We have got so many of them. These platinum and chrome dumps that are in the Western Bushveld and Sylvania has been concentrating mainly on getting platinum out, but now with the chrome price up, the chrome is being targeted as well.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s ferrochrome industry is being slowed down because of unfavourable global market conditions.

Creamer: This makes me really sad. We had a massive ferrochrome industry. We were the world leaders in 2010. We were employing so many people and we had so much of a contribution to the economy from ferrochrome.

The government was warned that we were losing this market, because Eskom’s electricity prices were so high, and we were no longer able to compete. What has happened is that slowly the ferrochrome business has declined to a point where you see Merafe reporting to the stock exchange that they are forced to slow down production even more, because of the fact that China is taking the market, and using our chrome ore to do so.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.