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18/10/2013 (On-The-Air)

18/10/2013 (On-The-Air)

safm18oct2013

18th October 2013

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Tsepiso Makwetla speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Makwetla: After a 13-year search, South Africans have managed to discover important new industrial uses for gold.

Creamer: You know 13-years ago we had a gold crisis and South Africans put their heads together and that was the tripart alliance, business, government and labour. They first went to the UK and said please don’t flood the market with gold because the price is down. Then they came back and said that we have got to do something here. 

We look at our platinum cousin where half of it goes to industrial use. What about gold? This is typecast into investment and typecast into jewellery, let’s look for other things. There has been a 13-year search and the breakthroughs are coming.  In one of them is the fact that gold can in nanoform become a catalyst.  

It does change colour and becomes purple at that stage, but it can remove carbon monoxide from airstreams. That is where it is starting to find an initial big volume niche in gas masks.

We see legislation coming through now to promote this advance gold can bring with carbon monoxide removal in these fire escape hoods and we even see the Chinese now making it compulsory to have these fire escape hoods in their hotels and airports.

o there is a sort of a legislative movement coming in to back this, which will be great. Not only is this gold involved in that, but we see it now in power station where it can possibly oxidise the mercury that is going into the atmosphere from some power stations.

We find that certain coal pushes mercury into the air and gold catalysts can also oxidise that so that it can be captured in a mechanism called a scrubber to prevent it from getting into the air. It is also involved with obesity research, gold is a fat reducing agent, so that could be a big potential.

Certain areas of glycolic acid in cement metal setting they are finding that gold can play a role. Across a broad front and possibly in fuel cells because there isn’t an issue with platinum fuel cells coming up where CO has to be removed and that role could again be played by gold.

Makwetla: A new Canadian platinum investor is talking up a ‘Platinum Valley’ for South Africa that mimics America’s famous ‘Silicon Valley’.

Creamer: A Canadian platinum investor is talking up a Platinum Valley for South Africa that mimics America’s famous Silicon Valley.  This is Ivanplats, they are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and we find that coming out of the Toronto Stock Exchange these days is a new breed of platinum miner.

They are not the type of platinum miner that we are used to here. They are prepared to do much more and Ivanplats has been research our platreef in the Limpopo Province for 17-years. It has been doing geological searches there like a submarine in deep waters. They have discovered fantastic orebodies.

We see again that one of the intersections they have got in their latest drilling indicates that they have got a platinum body there as tall as a 30-storey building. They are beginning to say that this mine could go on for 100-years and we can go and tick all the boxes including the manufacturing box that the government of South Africa is aspiring to in terms of beneficiation.

They are saying let us mine, but let’s have a partnership on the surface where we can produce goods like fuel cells. They have partnered now with no one less then Toyota. So, it is a massive Japanese partner. We can see those Japanese partners also investing in this operation.

The statement made last week in Canada at the Canada South African Chamber of Commerce was that the news from Ivanplats is that Toyota will have a vehicle powered by a fuel cell before the end of the year. Now, that could be a game changer for South Africa’s platinum industry and they concur on that.

So, we are getting a new breed of platinum miner coming in here and it is also PTM which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Will this new breed become the best of breed? The jury is out on that, but it looks like they want to do a lot more then our platinum miners have done in the past.

Makwetla: Standard Bank is backing another R10-billion worth of South African renewable energy projects.

Creamer: There has been tremendous success on the renewable energy front, with wind energy and solar energy. We’ve seen the private sector and government come together in a way that people say is a model for the world.

We saw the first window open and the second window open and in that 2 400 MW of potential clean electricity coming in facilitated by the Department of Energy and funded by banks and the private sector being involved. Now, the third window is going to open and we see the banks again with an appetite.

Standard Bank saying that just their backing will be another R10-billion worth of renewable energy projects. This has been a successful entry into the green world. It comes against the background of a business model, which I think the banks really like and that is the private sector produces this energy, but Eskom is obliged to buy it at a fixed price.

So, of course, that would appeal to the banks, but now each time they come in and each time the window opens they have got to sharpen their pencils and come in at lower rates, because the gap between what Eskom can produce is about 61 cents per kilowatt hour and the payment to these guys is quite big.

They need to close that gap and that is why these windows are opening at different times, so the next 1 000 MW guaranteed price will be lower at which they buy that power and in that way they are hoping the two prices will eventually meet and we will also have met our green obligations.

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

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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