https://www.miningweekly.com

On-The-Air (28/02/2014)

safm28feb2014

28th February 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

Font size: - +

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

Moodley: Let’s talk about the mining industry, Gold Fields has been heavily mechanising, the last time you where here you told us about that. Now the Australians again helping us mechanising and to achieve this. Yet another South African mining company is now bringing in Australians to boost local mechanised mining.

Creamer: Yet another South African mining company is now bringing in Australians to boost local mechanised mining. Mechanised mining has become the mantra and this time it is Northam Platinum. It is going to do so at its Booysendal mine out in the eastern limb of the Bushveld. 

Not on the Western Limb, where it has had the 79-day strike, but it is going to be completely mechanised at Booysendal. They brought in one Australian and noticed that the face advance was so impressive that they realised that they needed to this on a bigger scale. So they are going to train up matric level people from Limpopo.

Normally in the world, graduates are trained to man these big machines, so they are quite tricky. There is a lot of simulators and training centres action there to make sure that they can upskill local South Africans, but they are needing those Australians to do that job.

Of course, Northam have had a 79-day strike at Zondereinde and now their new CEO starts on Monday and we hear from National Union of Mineworkers that they are going to give him a baptism of fire and that they are not ruling out another strike.

Moodley: We see government wanting more investment in mining. I want to touch on the strikes issue in a second because I heard a mining executive talk last night making an impassionate plea to the Rustenburg community. But, investment in mining government wants that. They are going to relax exchange controls to do so?

Creamer: Government has relaxed it exchange control rules to allow for greater investment in mining. The way in is through the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

We see that there is now full indexing for inwardly listed companies and that already resulted in Glencore coming in in November, which is going to have a massive impact. Now there is another further easing where a South African Treasury company can allow those listed on the JSE to invest up to R750-million in projects.

That could include projects in Africa. We have been saying for a long time that we should be the area. Johannesburg should be the area where funds are raised to invest in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo where there is such rich copper. Now we see this easing actually coming about.

We know the Treasury has been working on it for a long time and hopefully there will be even further easing because we know we are way behind the stock exchanges of Toronto, London and Australia when it comes to actually raising a capital for mining.  Hopefully we can actually start changing that by this gradual easing, which will hopefully then end up in a normalised situation.

Moodley: So a lot of hope there for the mining industry, but over the last five weeks that we have been talking there has been an ongoing strike in platinum sector. Amcu is demanding R12 500 pay increases. I heard an Impala Platinum spokesperson last night, actually one of the executives making a rather impassionate plea and saying that they are saying that they are just in a crazy position.

They are in a force majeure that is what they are putting out right now and it means that smaller mid-sized companies in Rustenberg will be reeling today, because those companies stand to lose business because of this force majeure.

Creamer: Well Terence Goodlace, the CEO of Impala Platinum, said yesterday if he implements that R12 500 basic wage he is going to actually catastrophically have to close that flagship mine. The Impala Platinum Rustenburg that built that whole company and done so well for South Africa.

It has helped to build that town along with what Amplats have done in the platinum belt. He is saying that they are going to have to close the whole operation if they implement that. So it is a catastrophic, monstrous type of demand that is quite unyielding at the moment because it is not like the normal negotiations. We are going into the sixth week now of this strike and suppliers will be hard hit.

Moodley: American Platinum has appointed the Rand Refinery to run its local platinum manufacturing programme.

Creamer: You can see the goodwill coming in from the platinum companies. They are wanting to beneficiate locally. Here you see them appointing Rand Refinery to actually do this job that was previously done by Johnson Matthey and saying they want to get behind local use and added-value to platinum. That is why they are giving Rand Refinery this chance to actually make sure that people can get affordable platinum locally to do things in the manufacturing front including jewellery.

Moodley: 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

Comments

Showroom

Yale Lifting Solutions
Yale Lifting Solutions

Yale Lifting Solutions is a leading supplier of lifting and material handling equipment in Southern Africa. Yale offers a wide range of quality...

VISIT SHOWROOM 
SAIMC (Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Mechatronics and Control)
SAIMC (Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Mechatronics and Control)

Education: Consulting with member companies to obtain the optimal benefits from their B-BBEE spending, skills resources as well as B-BBEE points

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
27th March 2024
Resources Watch
Resources Watch
27th March 2024

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.117 0.156s - 98pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now