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

Gericke: South Africa’s green hydrogen future took a big leap forward this week through the award of a major contract.

Creamer: There was so much on green hydrogen this week, Jon, that it’s just unbelievable. We have had the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in South Africa and six projects came up, but the one that I focused on was a $5,8-billion dollar project. Now, let me repeat it: dollar. So, if you turn that into rands, it is like close to R100-billion and that’s just, they say, the first phase. This is planned in the Eastern Cape, which really needs an injection of economic activity and the idea is to produce the green hydrogen from the sea water.

You put the sea water into action and obviously you are going to get salt as well. That is why people were down there this week at Cerebos, the salt company, because Cerebos is very happy that it will get a supply of salt. But the big thing is that you are going to get green hydrogen to become green ammonia. That green ammonia is going to drive ships, but of course it can do a lot of other things. It can help you with fertiliser and food. The person leading the show is Thulani Gcabashe. Now, I am sure you remember Thulani Gcabashe. He used to be the CEO of Eskom. He then went into renewable energy, sun and wind energy. The sun and wind energy that will be needed for this green hydrogen ammonia project will be something like 3 000 megawatts. They have already got that lined up.

We saw the EU move down there quite strongly this week to have a look at things, because they are also part of the whole movement towards green hydrogen, helping South Africa fund this. But, we also saw a contract and an important contract being awarded there and this was awarded to a Spanish company, Técnicas Reunidas, and they are going to work with Hive Hydrogen South Africa. That is the company that is chaired by Thulani Gcabashe to build this to make sure we can export and that is a something that the world wants at the moment. It wants energy that is green and clean.

Gericke: South Africa’s prize platinum mine in Limpopo has an amazingly long life, which is very good news.

Creamer: Well, it is amazing how they spelt out the Mogalakwena value. Now, Valterra Platinum has now taken over the Mogalakwena. That was always part of Anglo American Platinum, but Anglo American Platinum has now left South Africa except for iron-ore and the company that stays here is now Valterra.

They showed the media their assets at a special webinar, which was physical and online, and among the platinum group metals that they focused on was the Mogalakwena. Now, we have always realised this is an incredible asset. But we never realised that this has got a potential 300-year-plus life. It is probably the prize platinum asset, ,because it also gives you base metals, it gives nickel, gives copper, and a lot of gold.

But the life -of-mine is 300 years plus if you look at the inclusive resources situation there. So, when people say, "Oh, we don't want to go into green hydrogen and we don't want to go into these things because we are scared there won't be enough platinum, they can forget about that. This is just one mine, never mind all the other platinum group metals mines in South Africa.

Gericke: South Africa needs to take urgent steps to ensure that its manganese ore rail and port network is uplifted.

Creamer: Well, I tell you, manganese is needing better rail, better port logistics. South Africa is now in the midst of implementing the third phase of what is the very important Government-Business Partnership for Growth and jobs, and part of Phase 3 is improving rail and port logistics.

So, the Manganese Producers Consortium has rushed along and said, "Please, guys, we cannot make a mistake with this because you get prices in mining that are up and down and if your costs for rail and port are now going beyond a third of your costs, you know that you have got to do something special to make sure that you are competitive. So, the Manganese Producers Consortium is pleading with the Government-Business Partnership for Growth and Jobs to ensure this part of the Phase 3 does not fail.

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