Welcome to Mining Weekly. In this podcast, read by Liezel Hill of Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly, we bring you the past week’s top news stories from the mining industry in South Africa and the rest of the world.

In this week’s bulletin:
- Arm and Norilsk approve a three point two billion rand expansion at Nkomati,
- De Beers’ zeppelin is damaged in a crash, and
- Independence Platinum starts platinum production using Mintek’s ConRoast smelting technology.

NICKEL EXPANSION

The owners of the Nkomati nickel mine, in Mpumalanga, have approved a three point two billion rand expansion plan to quadruple the yearly production of the mine.

Joint owners African Rainbow Minerals, a black-owned South African company, and Norilsk Nickel, from Russia, expect the phase- two large-scale expansion to extend the life of the mine by eighteen years, to 2027.

Arm and Norilsk will start construction early next year, and production will begin in the third quarter of 2009.

Full production is expected to be reached in the first quarter of 2011.

The companies say that average yearly nickel production in concentrate could be in the order of twenty thousand five hundred tons, while by-product output was expected to be nine thousand tons a year of copper, and one hundred and ten thousand ounces a year of platinum group metals.

ZEPELLIN CRASH

The world’s biggest diamond producer De Beers says that the airship that it uses to explore for diamonds in Botswana has been damaged in a crash, in which a crew member was injured.

The diamond-miner, which operates in partnership with the Botswana government in that country, says that the airship was tethered to its base at the time, but that a strong gust of wind had caused the attachment to break.

The accident happened at the exploration base set up in the vicinity of the Jwaneng mine.

The diamond giant said that although the airship’s suspension would impact on its exploration, it had other technologies to continue the programme.

PLATINUM SMELTER

Emerging company Independence Platinum has started continuous smelting activities at Mintek’s smelter in Johannesburg, and expects to tap the first platinum-group metal alloy this week.

South African State-owned minerals and metallurgy researcher Mintek and Independence Platinum announced in August last year that they had signed an agreement for the commercial development and exploitation of Mintek’s ConRoast process.

The technology, to which Independence Platinum has global rights, is being touted as a smelting breakthrough, as it is believed to easily cope with the normally vexing chrome content in UG2 ore, as well as with the high nickel-bearing Platreef, on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex.

The breakthrough comes at a time of noted smelting and refining under capacity, accompanied by a large number of new platinum entrants.

Also, in this week’s Mining Weekly magazine, published on Friday, read our cover story on the so-called “Chinafication” of Africa.

We also report on new equipment acquired by the CSIR to assist in the drive to combat silicosis.

Finally, don’t miss our feature on materials handling and logistics.

That’s a round up of this week’s stories on Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly. For more on these and other stories, visit miningweekly.com