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

Molebatsi: A Free State gold mine has turned a killer-gas methane curse into R200-million energy blessing.

Creamer: Exactly. This is Beatrix Gold Mine and it is part of the Gold Fields group. It has had a curse, because the methane gas in the gold mine is rather unusual, but it is a killer gas and other the years it has killed more then 40 people.

So, it is something that they needed to deal with from a safety issue, but also, it is a greenhouse gas, which is worse the CO2. They are doing many things in one go, but at the same time they are earning themselves money.

This is a lesson for South Africa where you can earn a revenue stream from your carbon credit. What has happened now is that they are going to pipe that methane gas up in a larger quantity, flare it on site and just by flaring it they are actually cutting down on the greenhouse possibility.

At the same time they are earning themselves R200-million over seven years from embarking on that mitigation of climate change activity. But, at the same time thereafter, they just have to spend a little more and they can get themselves energy, electricity and that would be 5 MW to start with, which will be 5 % of the electricity they need on the mine.

In fact, it will cover all their high density houses plus part of the plant. That is not the end of the story, because there is almost an infinite supply of this gas, which escapes through the process of mining. They can surely even double this in the not to distant future so that they can get 10 MW of electricity, which will be fantastic for their gold operation in the Free State.

Molebatsi: A promising new black-owned South African company has bought two coal mines in Zimbabwe.

Creamer: Lontoh Coal headed by the ebullient Tshepo Kgadima. He is a former investment banker, turned coal miner. It is not only thermal coal that he is dealing with, but it is also coking coal, which has got a lot of value, selling up to $200-dollars a ton.

He has got two operations now that he wants to develop in Zimbabwe. The one is close to Bulawayo and the other one is close to Wankie, which is particularly famous coal area. He also has got two mines in South Africa. Kgadima is hoping to be producing three-million tons of coal a year, two-million tons from Zimbabwe and a million tons from South Africa.

He wants to put his company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange main board before the end of the year. Not only that, he will raise R210-million ahead of that and develop his mines. But, he is also thinking of possibly going on the Australian Stock Exchange or the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, because he says Hong Kong particularly is giving new listings very good valuations because of the sovereign funds available and the burgeoning retail market.

A lot of insight through his investment banker experience on to how to develop coal and look into a situation where two-million tons will come from Zimbabwe and a million tons from South Africa.

Molebatsi: Hope in Barberton, which is resurging as a gold-mining destination, 100 years after the old-timers gave up trying there.

Creamer: The late 1880s, there used to be music halls and canteens and jollification in Barberton, which was a resurging gold-mining town and there were two stock exchanges there that used to work round the clock. I don't say it is going to go back to that sort of jollification intensity, but already you can see a lot more activity in the Barberton area.

People going for gold, because the old-timers hit a brick wall. The one was a technological one, because there is so much sulphide in the ore and the other is that the greenstone belt of the Mpumalanga is very fickle and it looks like it is running out when in the meantime it starts again lower down.

Because they didn't have enough modern drilling experience, they didn't realise this, and because they didn't have what we've got now, the Biox technology, we use goggas, we use bacteria to eat the sulphide and then it gets the gold out.

People are going back there and we now see Galaxy headed by Peter Skeat, also wanting to go on the main board on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange on August 11. He has got 26 orebodies there and he wants to turn them to very positive account, with a much different form of underground mining, almost bulk mining using trucks.

We also saw Pan African get back there. There has been a lot of illegal mining there, because some of the gold is visible. But, with the new Galaxy, they say there orebody is more complex and they don't expect that much of illegal mining.

Molebatsi: 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.