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

De Gouveia: I believe you have been away again kicking up some dust in the Kalahari.

Creamer: That’s right. Not only myself, but an ex-Soweto rioter is also kicking up a storm at Kalagadi Manganese. It is not only a mine, but it is also a sinter plant and an alloy project of about R11-billion. Daphne Mashile-Nkosi of Kalahari Resources and, of course, the chairperson of Kalagadi, was dodging the bullets of the police in June 16, 1976, but now she is having to dodge her critics like the naysayers of women in mining and beneficiation.

She is determined to prove both naysayers wrong particularly with this beneficiation project. She is saying that you can get $5 a ton for manganese-ore and she is going to be producing 3-million tons of it by the middle of next year or by August. She said you can then get $7 to $8 for a sinter product, so she is upgrading the ore to a sinter product and then she is going to take about 700 000 tons of that sinter product down to the industrial development zone at Coega and export it as high-carbon ferromanganese from the deep water port at Coega.

She is saying that you get something like $1 300 a ton. She is definitely pursuing this beneficiation, which the government wants and she feels that there is a strong business case for it. In the meantime she is surrounding herself with a lot of women both at corporate level and at operational level. When I was on site I found that the mining engineer is a women as well, Vuyokazi Nontso, who is also a South African karate champion, so I don’t think any of the men will mess with her.

They are going ahead with this project that will yield 2,4-million tons of sinter product from the third quarter of next year and looking like generating a revenue stream from 2014 of about R12-billion to R13-billion a year.

De Gouveia: That sounds very impressive indeed. Just to change gears a bit Martin, a retiring Wits professor has warned that South Africa’s mining research capacity has been decimated, which is a threat to mine safety. What is your take on this one?

Creamer: That is the comment of Professor Dick Stacey. An emeritus professorship has been bestowed on him for his good work at Wits. But, of course, he spent something like 25-years of his life in rock engineering including in the private sector, but he worked at Wits from 2000 to 2008. He is saying about 20-years ago there were 600 to 800 people involved in fulltime mining research in South Africa. His comment ‘if there are now 40, it’s a lot’.

He is saying that this presents safety implications, efficiency implications, profit implications and new start risk. It is not just a South African problem. He says that if you look at the final year mining class locally there are about half a dozen interested in rock engineering and relatively few numbers coming through. He has done a study with both his Canadian and Australian colleagues and they find that the situation is going to worsen.

He feels that the solution may lay in China, where there are now 1 000 rock engineering students. So, again China coming to the party in this sector of the economy, commodities which is really the only game in town at the moment. The good news coming out of Wits is that Professor Fred Cawood the Wits Mining School head reports that this world first mine design laboratory that they put in there, a really smashing state-of-the-art laboratory, has actually uplifted the marks of the students by 30% over the last year.

It shows you that if you give people very good facilities, direct mediation with the lecturers by computer, a one-on-one you can during the class with your lecturer by computer and these massive big drop-down screens, we are already seeing the results.

De Gouveia: Let’s end off on a positive note this morning, tell us about the potentially good news regarding coking-coal.

Creamer: Cocking-coal is not the energy coal that we burn to turn our lights on, but this is a metallurgical coal. It is a very valuable coal. There is a fair amount of it around Southern Africa, but we have to do the Southern Africa picture.

We have to look not only in our Limpopo province where the champion of all this is Coal of Africa Limited CEO John Wallington. He has been virtually moving mountains to get the Vale and Makhado project going and also getting the port and rail facility set-up to got through Maputo.

But, also Mozambique is an even bigger story, in the Tete Province. People are saying that Zimbabwe can also come in to the picture. If you add these together just on exploration now that could be about 50-million tons of coking-coal.

We know that the Australians get rich on this. When you go to Queensland province in Australia and you say to people how have you got all these water taxis and this fantastic infrastructure, they whisper in your ear, coking-coal. This is one of the biggest underpins for Queensland.

That Tete province in Mozambique, if it is managed properly by the politicians, could become a second Queensland, because people are already seeing it as a second Bowen Basin and that is where Australia produces 170-million tons of its coking-coal into the market. If we get our act right on that 50-million tons of coking-coal we could be earning the region R100-billion a year. So I think it is really a reward worth going for.

De Gouveia: The fundamental of course in favour of coking-coal is that its presence in the world is not really widespread, is it?

Creamer: It is scarce, scarce as hen’s teeth. We know that its price is following the iron-ore price which has been doing quite well over a period. Also, we see like Daphne Mashile-Nkosi looking at manganese, that is also another steel-feed material. So those three could go together and South Africa could build itself a nice position in these steel-feed products.

De Gouveia: 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.