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: South Africa’s Northern Cape is proving to be rich in copper.

Creamer: Historically there was a lot of copper mining in South Africa’s Northern Cape but then round about the 1990s, the copper price dropped and mines closed. But copper mining people are going in there, reopening some of the mines, and also exploring for new ones and every time they drill a hole, they get confident that there's a lot more copper. This is really important for us because the world is electrifying and the demand for copper is growing very strongly. So this is going to benefit South Africa.

Kamwendo: The State-owned Mintek is shining a bright light on South Africa’s valuable platinum group metals endowment.

Creamer: The platinum group metals are becoming more and more important. They have got strong demand now. But, in the future, they may not have that strong demand, or they may have increased demand. In the meantime, a State enterprise like Mintek, which is South Africa’s national mineral research organisation, is looking very strongly at how you can increase the efficiency of mining and processing, particularly processing, platinum group metals. They hosted a presentation which I think is going to assist in emphasising just how important it is to extract the best value out of platinum group metals and Mintek is outlining how that can be done.

Creamer: Sibanye-Stillwater is developing nearly a dozen new platinum group metals projects in South Africa.

Creamer: It is remarkable that you have a situation where there three were historically three big mining companies that historically work separately even though they adjoined one another. But the three big mines were bought by a single company, and that has made all the difference because the three mines have now been brought together into one mine.

This is what has happened with Sibanye-Stillwater out at Rustenburg and also Marikana. The former Anglo-American Platinum and the former Lonmin and former Aquarius have been brought together as one mine, and this is unlocking huge value. Just on the primary mining projects there are seven going forward and then you have got several secondary projects going, because there are so many dumps there from where you can extract the platinum group metals. Then there are also  processing plants. It is so rich; it has got flexibility and mines often need flexibility. Sometimes the price of their metals and minerals is high, sometimes it is low and this operation now across 70 kilometres offers tremendous flexibility and also tremendous value.

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