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: Steps are being taken to revive a key Gauteng manganese beneficiation plant, along with the jobs that go with it.

Creamer: If you travel from Ekurhuleni to the south, on your way to Meyerton, on the right-hand side, you will see a wonderful processing plant – but it has been lying dormant for ages. Now, the Menar group is intent on reviving it this because it uses South Africa’s manganese and South Africa has got the biggest supply of manganese in the world, but we don't add much value to it.

The infrastructure to beneficiate manganese ore or fines is all there. Menar is intent on using existing rail infrastructure to transport manganese material up from the Northern Cape, put it through this plant with new electricity processes and then export to try and increase the 5% of ferromanganese that we export at the moment. The value that is added when you beneficiate is considerable and the jobs that will be recreated there will be something like 700. Menar is becoming quite big in manganese.

They have been mining manganese themselves in the Northern Cape at an opencast operation and now they are intent on developing a new underground manganese mine. The value of all the manganese material that they and others produce can then be uplifted in value and exported to the world in what is a very good story for South Africa.

Kamwendo: New life being breathed into a Gauteng gold recovery operation at a time of record-high gold price.

Creamer: You know the gold price is going through the roof and every time you drive past an old gold mine dump, realise that there is gold inside those dumps. If you can that gold out  of those dumps, the great height at which the gold price is at the moment can be a huge wealth creator for South Africa.

This is what DRDGOLD is looking at maximising at Ergo, on the East Rand, where they have also solved their electricity problem. DRDGOLD has built a big solar farm on the East Rand capable of generating 60 megawatts of solar power, which represents half of the electricity they need. So, this is a very big environmentally positive story, because when you remove those tailings dumps, you release land below those dumps for new productive land use.

They have been there for 12 years. They have actually removed many dumps now. They are going into a new era where they will extend the life there for another 14 years. Every time they do that, the biodiversity improves. You get new residue dumps, but they are modern dumps. Those still have gold in them, so in many years to come, people may have new technology to get that gold out.

At the moment, they cannot get all the gold out of those dumps, but they can get a lot of it out and with the gold price as high as it is, this is a magnificent way of creating value and making sure we restore the environment at the same time.

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