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: A world-leading project is under way in Mpumalanga to supply manganese for battery electric vehicles.

Creamer: Now battery electric vehicles are demanding quite a lot of metals, but up to now, they haven't gone for manganese. They now want manganese, because they see it as having properties that help the electricity and also lower costs, which is wonderful news, because in Mbombela, South Africa has got the manganese company, MMC, that is already producing metal from manganese. They can convert that in the short term to manganese sulphate, which is what is needed by their Japanese customers, their European customers and their American customers.

It looks like they are going to be the first company in the Western world to the global market with manganese sulphate, which is what the electric vehicle segtor is after. China is there already, but outside of China, it will be South Africa that beats everyone to this market, which is a fantastic achievement for South Africa. It is also good for us, because manganese one of our great mineral resources. We have huge stores of manganese metal in the Kalahari, and what they are using initially for this is manganese fines, but as demand grows, MMC will build a bigger plant where they will use manganese ore, but for the same product, which is going to be in big demand around the world. We see other companies in America and all over the world also wanting to get involved in this, but South Africa is beating everyone to the punch, with a proudly South African high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate.

Kamwendo: A new gold recovery operation was officially opened this week, west of Johannesburg.

Creamer: West of Johannesburg are old mine dumps that contain a lot of gold. The gold price at the moment is going through the roof, and if you get gold from those dumps, you would normally do it at low cost. Now, we have seen Pan African just launched and commissioned this week. They are producing their gold off those dumps at less than $1 000 an ounce. Now that is remarkable, because they are able to sell that gold at $2 500 an ounce and already there they are going to have 50 000 oz for the next 20 years, which is a fantastic thing for Mogale City.

It is a fantastic thing for Kagiso and Krugersdorp. When I went there yesterday there were 1 600 people on site, the bulk of them people from the local community. They are really going all out to work with the community. They are virtually eradicating illegal mining activity there. When I went there for the initial launch a year ago, there was the problem of illegal mining quite seriously within earshot. When I got there yesterday, there was nothing like that. A lot of community involvement, a lot of support for this. So, it is really wonderful. I think we should do more with these dumps, because there is much more material there and we can turn it to positive account getting the gold out of it, but also restoring the environment, because there is water that is being polluted there. They fixing the water. They are doing a lot of the materials, and they could eventually release ground for housing.

Kamwendo: A new vanadium project in Limpopo is being uplifted by China Energy.

Creamer: It is fantastic that China Energy has been attracted by the Steelportdrift vanadium project, which is very incipient, but very big and very rich. It comes through from Australia-funded effort. Current work there has been underpinned by the Vanadium Resources company being listed in Sydney. But the news of it has attracted the attention of China Energy, which I didn't realise was as big as it is. I mean, it’s like 20 times to 30 times bigger than Eskom.

They want to be involved vanadium, because vanadium is becoming closely associated with electricity storage. They are big in electricity, so they want to get that source of vanadium to make the vanadium flow batteries. One of the beautiful things is the vanadium electrolytes are rented out, so, very unusual for mining, is that the ore is not just sold away, it comes back and is sold again, so the Steelportdrift project out in Limpopo has the potential to become a value-adding enterprise.

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