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: Hopes are high that the large ferromanganese plant in Gauteng will soon be awakened from its slumber.

Creamer:  If you travel along the Sybrand freeway from Johannesburg towards Vereeniging and Meyerton you will see, when you get close to Meyerton, that on the right, there is a Metalloys plant, which has been lying dormant for many years. But Khwelamet have bought it and they have got all the rights now to bring it back into contention.

They’re working with Eskom. They are working with Transnet and they say both Eskom and Transnet are very excited to get this ferromanganese smelter back online, because this has, in the past, meant business for Eskom and it has meant business for Transnet, which has been lost. The closing of this ferromanganese plant, as well as many of South Africa’s other dormant ferroalloy smelters, has been big blow to South Africa, because when they bring the ore up on rail to the plant in Meyerton from the Northern Cape, they add iron to it and they uplift the value of the manganese ore many times.

Then they put  the ferromanganese, an added-value product, back on rail and they export it via Durban or Richards Bay. This is what they are planning to bring back again now. The moment they get a feasible price from Eskom, they’re going to get moving on bringing the first two of Khwelamet’s four dormant furnaces back to life.

Kamwendo: The demand outlook for South Africa’s platinum metals has been uplifted by a new Toyota project in China.

Creamer:  The demand for platinum in China has been lifting the platinum price to far better heights. China is the biggest consumer of platinum group metals by a long shot, and now you can see that Toyota of Japan realises that if they want to get platinum-based hydrogen vehicles really moving – and Toyota is pioneer in this field of fuel-cell hydrogen electric vehicles – they must work with China.

So, Toyota has now agreed a joint venture with the major Chinese conglomerate Shudao Investment to build a hydrogen fuel cell plant in Chengdu. One would think that it’s going to take them many years to get going, but typical of these projects that are in Asia, they say that by the end of the year, they will already moving towards the fuel cell electric vehicle boosting and that means that they will use platinum and that is great news for South Africa.

Kamwendo: South Africans must go all out to maximise gold production while the gold price remains high.

Creamer: South Africans were once the biggest gold producers in the world. We are no longer the biggest, but we have got a lot of things here that enable us to get into the market very well. The one is our Rand Refinery. That is not operating at full capacity at the moment and it is available to refine more gold. We have got five gold mining companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. You can see their results. I mean, they’re just booming at the moment.

They’re bringing in revenue galore. Their shareholders are so happy. People are reinvesting. In addition I'm also getting calls from geologists, who are saying that there are still gold-in-the-ground opportunities in South Africa and I think South Africa must go all out to maximise its gold output through grasping every opportunity that there is to get more gold. The exceptional gold price is not going to go away soon because of the big uncertainties in today’s world. The gold price is already sky high and people are now even forecasting an uplift to $4 000 an ounce. South Africans should make sure that they make hay while the gold sun shines.

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