Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: New Proudly South African technology that uses 70% less electricity has entered the key commercial phase.

Creamer: This was given quite a lot of recognition at the recent modernisation showcase of the Minerals Council South Africa and a lot of researchers. They want South Africa to modernise mining and this was held up as a local, Proudly South African development. It is called SmeltDirect.

It was developed by African Rainbow Minerals and it has reached a commercialised stage, so it can actually be retrofitted to existing smelters. We know that a lot of these smelters have had to stop, because of the price of electricity. We also know that Eskom is negotiating lower prices with them, but if they can cut the use of electricity by 70%, that will be incredibly positive. Also, SmeltDirect also comes with a lot of other benefits.

It comes with the ability to use renewable energy, which means this will be cleaner and greener and it comes with a lot of efficiency. People are saying, let's modernise while we keep these smelters going on and we have got this technology that is available now. It is at commercial level. Let's use it. Some of the companies are a little bit reluctant to invest at this stage, but hopefully there will be some sort of incentive for them to do so.

Kamwendo: The planned restart of a platinum mine and a nickel mine is good news for the South African economy.

Creamer: Very good news for the South African economy. We want mining to continue. We want mines to grow. We want mines on care-and-maintenance to be reopened. We don't like to see mines with potential to remain closed. So, this Bakoni mine is very rich. It has got a great prospect. It has platinum group metals and then you have got the Nkomati mine, which is a nickel mine.

Both of these are heading for a restart and heading for good returns. This is again African Rainbow Minerals wanting to bring these back into operations and do so in a way that is very efficient. They have looked into this in depth. You can see the returns that they are forecasting are very good, and they are going to bring these back, which is very good for our economy.

Kamwendo: The demand for cleaner and greener iron-ore is reinforcing demand for what South Africa has to offer.

Creamer: It is amazing that the high quality of our iron-ore is being recognised by the world. We have got high-grade iron-ore we have got lumpy ore and the world is prepared to pay extra for it because this helps them become greener when they make steel. Being greener and cleaner is an imperative that is being imposed. Europe, for example, has got a new structure where if you bring in iron-ore that is in pellet form and lower in quality, you pay a penalty because this means that it cannot do the process in a clean way and in a faster way.

South Africa’s iron-ore has got the advantage of being better. But, in addition to that, South Africans are also taking waste iron-ore material and, with the help of locally developed technology, improving the quality of that waste material to a level that the world is also prepared to pay a higher price for So, two very important aspects help South Africa to attract prices higher that what is generally paid for iron-ore – we are rewarded with premium prices.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.