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: Development of the green hydrogen economy is seen as being key by South Africa’s platinum mining industry.

Creamer: Platinum miners are price takers. They are not price makers, and the prices are down at the moment. So, there is a disruption in the industry, because the automotive industry generally just used platinum. Now there is a mixture of technologies within the automotive industries, which is not creating enough demand for platinum group metals. What the platinum group mining industry is planning, is to try and stimulate demand.

They see that the best way of doing this is by stimulating interest in green hydrogen. Now we see that the green hydrogen is produced with electrolysers that need platinum group metals so that you get the green hydrogen from the electrolysers using platinum group metals. When you have got the green hydrogen, you then pass that through a fuel cell to create clean electricity and that fuel cell also requires platinum group metal. On both sides of the equation, you have got demand coming in and that is what they want to emphasise at the moment.

They feel that green hydrogen is the little sibling in the corner, which is not being recognised, because it requires some infrastructure. Now, there is a German company that has come through and said, you can use existing infrastructure. What they are doing is they are giving the hydrogen an oily skin and that will be able to then use every bit of infrastructure we have got. So, if you go to Midrand at the moment, you will see there is a BMW fleet that gets its green hydrogen from a filling station there, but it is a starting point that needs to really be expanded.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s platinum group metals mining companies are placing a new emphasis on chrome.

Creamer: When they mine platinum, if they are going into certain reef, they also get chrome ore. Now you have a situation where platinum group metal prices are down, but the chrome price is very high, so they are now emphasising their chrome, trying to get as much chrome out as possible into the market, mainly into China, where it goes into ferrochrome, to produce stainless steel. Because stainless steel is so long lasting it is seen as helping the planet during this period of climate change, because you don't have to produce steel over and over. If you use stainless steel, it lasts for much longer. So there is a big demand now for chrome and the response from the platinum mining industry is to emphasise chrome production while platinum group metal prices are down.

Kamwendo: Action is being taken to ensure that clean electricity is used to produce South Africa’s aluminium.

Creamer: We have a very big aluminium plant at Hillside in KwaZulu Natal. It employs 31 000 people, directly and indirectly. It contributes a lot to our gross domestic product and it is a very important asset to the country, but it uses Eskom electricity and Eskom electricity is regarded as unacceptable, because it is from fossil fuel. So, when exporting into Europe, they are getting faced with potential tariffs now, because they will say, you are using fossil fuel, you are not using a clean, green fuel.

We are going to put a penalty on your aluminium and this is presenting a threat to 31 000 jobs and also what is a considerable contribution to the South African economy. Steps have been taken now to try and make sure that they can change that electrical to a lot of solar and also a lot of wind. But it is such a huge amount of electricity that you use, they might also have to use concessionary nuclear power.

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