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: Investment demand for platinum is rising sharply in China, which is a big plus for South Africa.

Creamer: South Africa hosts the most platinum group metals in the world and China is awakening to the fact that this is used across so many industrial applications, even jewellery applications and it is going into hydrogen. They can see before their eyes that this is going to be needed in China, that they are now sweeping into platinum investment.

They are investing in the metal itself. You can see that by the end of the year, they will have probably acquired about 250 000 ounces of platinum as an investment. They have launched for themselves just recently a new platinum investment bar. It is a one kilogram platinum bar, and people are investing in that. They will thus have the physical metal and if ever there is a major need that can’t be supplied, they can then dispense with the bar and get a good return on the investment. This is all part of work that South Africans have been doing for a long time now, through the World Platinum Investment Council.

They have the Shanghai Platinum Week and at the last platinum week, a lot of new ideas came up, including having a futures exchange there, which is now being developed. So, it will be great for South Africa if demand can get the price of platinum well up, because we see that Anglo American is going to detach Anglo American Platinum, which will be listed again separately, on its own on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. At that time, to get investors here to come in, a higher platinum group metals price basket will be very helpful. In the meantime, China is recognising platinum as a very important metal for the future of energy in the world and what we are talking about is the greenest of green clean energy.

Kamwendo: A big solar power plant on the Gauteng’s East Rand has received a formal grid connection certificate from Eskom.

Creamer: This is very important. You have gold being recovered from dumps and in Gauteng on the East Rand, you have a long established plant, the Ergo plant. It draws the mine dump sand from as far field as Soccer City. So, there are 50 kilometres of pipe and so it needs stable electricity. They flew journalists over the plant this week and you could see this enormous new solar power expanse, plus a lot of batteries.

There about 133 000 solar panels there and there are about 43 big batteries. They have now got official certification from Eskom that they can link this to transmission lines that they can wheel the green power as well. At the moment, they are using all the power themselves and in the using this clean power, they have reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 52%. They are still keen on doing more self-generation of power, because a third of their cost comes from electricity and this has lowered the cost of their electricity and it also enables them now to get into the transmission grid officially.

The group is also recovering gold from dumps on the far West Rand. On the East Rand, the Ergo plant was constructed 1978 by Anglo and then taken over by DRDGOLD, which is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. DRDGOLD is now also recovering gold on the West Rand. So, they will be doing a lot more looking at more clean power and it is likely to be solar power, they said this week.

Kamwendo: South Africans are behind the launch of a major new critical minerals mine in Madagascar.

Creamer: A lot of these South Africans were looking to do this in South Africa, but we have been slow here on the exploration front. Our exploration cadastre isn't ready and we don't know when that will actually be announced. So, two years ago, one of the former Chief Financial Officers of Sasol and also a former financial director of Eskom went in search of graphite, because graphite is going to be needed by the batteries of electric vehicles.

As it turned out, the graphite jackpot has been hit in Madagascar and we see now that they have actually succeeded in shipping out their first graphite to Germany and North America. They are looking to develop a major mine there. And because, of course, of their South African background, they are also talking about beneficiating and this means adding value.

In years gone by, that wasn't a frequent discussion by mining companies, but today many talk of becoming a lot more active along the supply chain and these South Africans are doing what they could have done here, but South Africa is not ready for it yet on the exploration front. Hopefully soon we will get our exploration going so we can get critical metals doing magic for us as well.

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