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 South African mining company has set an impressive new record by operating for ten years without a fatality.

Creamer: Yes, this is an incredible safety performance by as Assmang. It operates mainly in the Northern Cape. It does manganese and iron-ore, but it's also got a smelter in KwaZulu Natal. It's got six operations and 10 000 people, and it's impressive that it has ten years of fatality-free operation. Now, that’s something mining companies really strive for. If you go to any presentation by a mining company, the first thing they'll tell you that they want to be very safe and they want zero fatality, but these companies invariably suffer some sort of safety hardship, which results in them having to report some fatality. But in this case, you've got this company, Assmang, with three underground mines, two opencast mines, plus a smelter with 10 000 people coming through for a decade without a single fatality. It's quite remarkable.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s platinum group metals are receiving a major boost by new research and development.

Creamer: There are several platinum group metals, but the ones that we know the best are platinum, palladium, rhodium. Often, we don't think of the others, and the one that popped up very strongly at the PGM Industry Day held to promote platinum group metals was ruthenium, and there we saw a German company, Haraeus, come through to Joburg here and explain that although we always see platinum group metals attached to the automotive industry to make sure that car exhausts don't pollute the air of the cities of the world, there's also another part to them, which is on the chemical side, and the three areas where they're saying ruthenium can play a massive role, is in green hydrogen, and also in biotech and electronics, and so heck of a lot of research is going on, and a lot of people were saying that ruthenium won't be able to hide its light under a bushel for much longer.

Kamwendo: A new laboratory will be opened soon to increase the use of the palladium that is mined in South Africa.

Creamer: So, South Africa tends to push platinum and palladium probably comes second, but we don't really talk about palladium in the way that it was highlighted at the recent PGM Industry Day. But the big news now is that a Centre for Palladium Technology is to be opened, and again, those that have decided to open the technology centre see that yet another of platinum group metal as being absolutely magical, and I'm so glad that South Africa's Minister of Trade and Industry, Parks Tau, has also outlined how the new upcoming platinum group metals era is so important for South Africa, as the world goes through into the new green energy transition. But the developers of the Centre for Palladium Technology again said early on that South Africans must come and work with them on palladium research and development at this new centre, because what they are promoting is the alloying of platinum group metals. So, instead of just having palladium on its own, you might mix palladium with the far lesser known osmium PGM, for example, or alloy palladium with one of the other platinum group metals, and suddenly its properties get so much stronger, and they can then be applied across so many different areas very effectively. South Africa is very lucky because it is blessed with the world's biggest endowment of platinum group metals, and we can see now that our Trade and Industry Minister Parks Tau is very keen to leverage off these far-reaching metals and that’s wonderful news for South Africa.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly, and he’ll be back with us At the Coalface at the same time next Friday.