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: A R100-billion green hydrogen ammonia project is advancing well in the Eastern Cape.

Creamer: R100-billion is a lot of money and that they are saying is just the first phase. This is being developed by Hive Hydrogen South Africa that is chaired by Thulani Ghabashe. He is the former CEO of Eskom, and he went into renewable energy. Renewable energy is needed for green hydrogen and green hydrogen is there to make sure that the world doesn't suffer more climate change from pollution. So, in all respects, this is a very sacred project and one of the good points this week is that they said it is really going well and that there should be a very big announcement coming through next month. That is really important for South Africa. Although the green hydrogen ammonia product will be exported, it will earn as foreign exchange and it will also clean up the shipping industry, because they will use that product to transport their ships. It will eventually also mean that this is a start for green hydrogen and green ammonia in South Africa.

Kamwendo: Renewable energy and manganese mining are boosting the business of Exxaro Resources.

Creamer: Now, this is another mainly coal mining company, Exxaro Resources. It will be 20-years old this year and this company has done the right thing by continuing to mine coal, because there is the demand for coal, but also developing wind energy and developing solar energy. Also moving into the critical metals space and by 2030 they want more than half of the revenue coming into Exxaro to be from renewable energy and to be from future-facing metals. In the meantime, they are growing the renewable energy substantially. It is scaling up and we have just seen them commission a plant at the Grootegeluk coal mine in Limpopo, which will supply the energy, clean energy, to the coal mine, which is a very nice way of doing things. It is interesting that the founding CEOs of Exxaro, they call themselves the pensioners, are still around and when Exxaro presents its financial results, and they also add to the dialogue. It’s nice to have 20 years of insight to contribute, even if it's not formal. They continue to provide insight that is valuable to the current leadership of the company.

Kamwendo: A company that recovers gold from old mine dumps this week reported very good financial results.

Creamer: Yes, it’s been a really good year for DRDGOLD, a company that recovers gold from old mine dumps. Now, this is a very important company for South Africa, because we have terrible mining legacies in the form of these old gold mine dumps. They are in a lot of places, and they do damage to the environment. One would say, how are you going to pay to repair environment? How are you going to remove that big mine dumps? Well, you don't have to pay anything. Along comes a company like DRDGOLD and they extract the gold out of the dumps and they are doing so in a better and more lucrative fashion all the time. They are continually improving their performance. Then they use that money to restore the environment and they restore it so well in some places that the original animals that used to be in that area are returning, because they think this is the original environment and at the same time, of course, the gold price is so high, so they are really doing very well financially at the moment.

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