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: This week’s good news is that South Africa is very much back on the global investment radar screen.

Creamer: Former Minerals Council South Africa, CEO Roger Baxter, has been in New York and in Toronto for an investment roadshow and he reports back as he is now the chairperson of Southern Palladium, that South Africa is very much back on the global investment radar. He says that this was clear in all the meetings that he had in North America and in Europe. Also, he is now developing a project in South Africa and it is a project that will probably be the last big tier-one platinum group metals project that we have on the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld Complex. The money raised has been nearly $20-million and $15-million of that has been spent on successful exploration. We have been talking about exploration and the need for it, and this exploration has uncovered something that will produce 400 000 oz of platinum group metals a year. The project will be producing in 2028 just at the time when people are expecting the prices of platinum group metals to rise. So, a good-looking project for South Africa at a time when he is saying the market is looking favourably to invest here. This will be something that comes in a very timely way.

Kamwendo: A new initiative is under way to revive South Africa’s dangerously shrinking ferrochrome business.

Creamer: We had a booming ferrochrome business here two decades ago. We led the world. We produce 70% of the world's chrome. We added iron to it in smelters. We had low-cost electricity and we took the world by storm. What happened is the price of electricity just got so high here through the mismanagement of Eskom and we have been losing that market share since then to China. Now, all of a sudden, the good news coming through from African Rainbow Minerals, headed by Dr Patrice Motsepe is that we have developed a new smelting technology that can be three times better in terms of electricity. It will use three times less electricity to give us an equal ferrochrome production. He is calling on South Africa now and the government as well, to get back into this market to try and reclaim what we had. It was dominant in the world now China is dominant, but using our chrome. If we get not just chrome leaving our country, but ferrochrome, it will change our roads. We are hearing reports that chrome trucks are being hijacked and we saw pictures of people close to the Mozambique border at night. Pictures how they had steered away one of the trucks and taken all the chrome-ore. So, the less bulk we can carry and the more beneficiary product we can carry, the better. So, they now want to step back into the ferrochrome, get back into smelting and produce a higher value product for export than what we are doing. See some of these jobs back there used to be 200 000 jobs and we need jobs desperately at the moment.

Kamwendo: An old mine dump in Limpopo is hosting some of the world’s most critical rare earth elements.

Creamer: Rare earth elements are really needed in the world. Just about every new technology now needs permanent magnets. These rare earth elements are essential for permanent magnets and here we have got a legacy, a dump in Limpopo, where they have discovered has got four of the best and the most sought after of these rare earth elements for permanent magnets, which are being used in everything from electrical vehicles to wind turbines and robots, even robots. So, these magnets are needing these rare earth elements and it is fantastic news that we have these old dumps that are so valuable. As you get these very valuable rare elements out, you also improve the environment. This is what we hoping to see by the company Rainbow Rare Earths, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, which has just completed a big study. They don't call them dumps, they call them gypsum stacks. They want to not only get the rare earths out of this, but also the gypsum which will sell into the local market.

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