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

Gericke: Hopes are high that platinum will be boosted by the upcoming Shanghai Platinum Week in China.

Creamer: You know, when they have the Shanghai Platinum Week, they have had five of them, it is full of South Africans, of course, full of platinum people. We have got one coming up next month where people's hopes are really high. Because, what is going to happen there, is a new trading ecosystem is probably going to be established. So, you will have greater price discovery for platinum group metals. We have already seen that the other Shanghai platinum metal efforts have boosted the investment in platinum. It was 140% increase in investment bars. They are being promoted on TikTok. You can see what is happening to our platinum price, it is really rising well now, after being in the doldrums. The hopes are high that if they create this new ecosystem and allow sponge also to be traded, not just solid bar, that it is going to really uplift the price discovery, which is what platinum needs. We know our economy relies so much on platinum mining that this will be a wonderful thing for our economy.

Gericke: South Africans are now using their exceptional ability to recover gold from mine dumps in Australia.

Creamer: It is incredible. You know, we built up the skill of recovering gold from our dumps and from our slimes dams. Other countries have not developed the skill like we have. We now have our medium-sized companies here, like Pan African Resources, headed by CEO Cobus Loots, going off to the Northern Territory of Australia and they are recovering there with the same efficiency and aplomb as we have been doing it here. We saw what Pan African did just west of Johannesburg in Krugersdorp with Mogale. They were ahead of schedule, below budget. Now, they are going into other destinations and despite those being new, we see that they have done the same Northern Territory. They have done it on budget and they have done it on time. So, I think it is going to be a big thing. It is going to help those stock exchange listed companies here in gold at a time when the gold price is at a sky-high level.

Gericke: More copper mining is expected to take place in South Africa’s Northern Cape in the next six to 12 months.

Creamer: We must realise that our Northern Cape is probably at a position that Western Australia was three or four decades ago. It is highly perspective, but not mined to a great extent. It is wonderful now that you have got these companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, some of them dual-listed, that are focusing on the Northern Cape and coming up with good things. We see Orion, but we have also seen Copper 360 come through with a pledge this week saying we will mine 5 000 tons of copper in their Rietberg Mine., in the Northern Cape. That is the first of Copper 360’s 12 mines there that they intend to bring back to life. That will be done in the next six to 12 months. So, they are giving you hard and fast prospects of what is going to happen in their mines. Copper 360, particularly, are surprised on the upside. They are looking at these 12 assets that they got, starting with Rietberg, but everywhere they go, they feel they could get more out of these mines that the people used to get copper out of. These are dormant mines, you know, although they are closed and they are recovering them. That is also, cost wise, very good, because they are brownfield, as they say, and not expensive greenfield projects.

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