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

Zwane: Medical demand for South Africa’s platinum metal is rising sky high, World Platinum reported this week.

Creamer: This is fantastic news for South Africa. The more demand there is for platinum, the better for our economy. We are the biggest producers of platinum in the world and we have the biggest platinum reserves in the world. Now, the demand has mainly come from the automotive industry, where it stops pollution going into the air, but we seeing that it is also developing very strongly in the hydrogen economy, where it produces hydrogen from water. It also is effective in fuel cells. But now, medical is another big area. By the end of this year, they say about 350 000 ounces will go into medical and when you look at medical pacemakers for your heart, these pacemakers cannot do without platinum. They have to have platinum, because of the great conductivity of this in the electrode and also the resistance to corrosion, among several other factors.

Zwane: Zambia is planning to grow a lot of cassava not only to provide the country with food but also with fuel.

Creamer: We normally associate Zambia with copper and now we have got another big C coming through, the C for cassava, which Zambia wants to grow initially in the Copperbelt, because they need to develop the economy to an extent that the agricultural sector is also contributing a lot. The first idea was to get food, because cassava is rich in starch, but then they said you can also get biofuels. Already there are investors coming forward for that to provide refuelling stations, so what we call petrol stations. You pull in there and fill your car with petrol. They are planning in the future to fill their cars with biofuel from the cassava. That is because countries are not wanting to just send money out the country all the time, you have got to bring in oil for your petrol and diesel and then the money goes straight out. If you do it in your country, the money stays in and you can develop your economy around this product, which will not only feed the people but also provide them with transport fuel.

Zwane: More research work in a Johannesburg laboratory this week gave rare earth elements another big boost.

Creamer: Rare earth elements are in such demand in the world because we need them for the wind energy. The magnets in those big wind turbines require rare earth elements and lot of other uses for rare earth elements. Fantastically, you know, our South Africans, who are always looking out for opportunities, stumbled upon a waste dump in Limpopo, and they created the Phalaborwa project. Out of that project, they take the waste material and they get the rare earth elements. But not only that, they have gone into such research right here, in  a laboratory in Johannesburg, where they are doing fantastic research and development. On 1 September, they created rare earth elements with a purity that nobody else in the world can match, and then 22 days later, they have now come up with more research success in that the  low value product in the waste will be eliminated and the high value products will be brought to the fore like never before.

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