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 big advance in green hydrogen technology is very positive for South Africa’s platinum group metals.

Creamer: South Africa has backed a winning horse in the form of Hydrogenious of Germany, which has come up with a breakthrough that is going to change the world. What Hydrogenious has done is creating an oily skin for hydrogen, so it can be transported in our pipes and all our tanks as normal diesel. The pipes and the tanks and the ships will think this is diesel, but it’s not. It’s green hydrogen and it opens up massive things for trading and for doing things like we do with oil at the moment. It is coming down the cost curve so fast that the world could change with this, because it will make everything clean and green.

Kamwendo: South Africa is benefitting from exciting new gold projects going ahead at a time of sky-high gold price.

Creamer: With the gold price so high, South Africa has to take full advantage of its gold legacy and gold companies are doing just that. One of the benefits coming through is how the high gold price can uplift diversified mines experiencing low prices in other metals. We saw with Sibanye-Stillwater, how the sky-high gold price lifted their earnings by 216%. But also all around us we are seeing exciting gold recovery projects moving ahead fast. We have got DRDGold with new projects coming through to get that gold off the dumps. We have got Pan African doing the same in Krugersdorp. We have got Harmony Gold doing that in the Free State. So, they are getting all the gold that is lying there on those dumps, they are moving it out as fast as possible, which is earning a fantastic foreign exchange uplift for South Africa, which needs to work smartly as a collective to take up its many energy,  digitalisation and tourism opportunities.

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