There is growing curiosity about crowdfunding, the practice of raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people on the Internet. It is certainly beginning to change the way junior miners raise money. Earlier this year, IDM Mining, of Canada, raised $10-million partly through crowdfunding to fund a drilling programme in north-west British Columbia. The crowdfunding part of the deal was done by investment company Red Cloud Klondike Strike, whose founder, president and CEO Chad Williams, told this month’s Junior Indaba in a live feed from Toronto of the company’s many other crowdfunding possibilities in the pipeline. Red Cloud, which offers financing with crowdfunding as a subset, will fund mining anywhere in the world, provided the orebody is of adequate quality to offset risk.

Deputy Minerals Minister Godfrey Oliphant was right to sound the alarm about the lack of investment in mining exploration in South Africa. If there is only exploration around existing mines and no greenfield exploration, the mining industry’s horizon will be quickly shortened. At this month’s Junior Indaba, Oliphant called for the establishment of a mining industry growth, development and employment task team (Migdett) for the junior mining sector to ensure future exploration investment. A joint thrust by government, business and labour, Migdett was established to assist mainstream South African mining companies during the headwinds faced in 2008. In the Deputy Minister’s view, it should now be used to get junior mining involved in prospecting. Other global mining jurisdictions give strong support to exploration and the Australian government is making funds available to it, while Canada has the highly successful flow-through scheme, which gives tax breaks to those who invest in listed exploration companies.

Impala Platinum fuel cell coordinator Fahmida Smith told this month’s Junior Indaba that the creation of a local economic zone to advance fuel cells is being fast-tracked, tying in with the revised Mining Charter’s emphasis on beneficiating locally mined metals. The use of platinum to catalyse electrochemical energy into clean electricity is in a state of ongoing advance. Only last week, the University of the Western Cape-hosted and State-backed Hydrogen South Africa Systems announced that it had entered into a three-part agreement with European fuel cell stack provider Nedstack BV and Cape Town company Africa Green Energy Technologies to locally manufacture proton exchange membrane fuel cell components and systems. The month before, an even more significant step was taken towards the viable roll-out of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure for platinum-using fuel cell electric vehicles with the commercial launch of a system that allows hydrogen to be stored and transported in conventional fuel infrastructure. This breakthrough has been achieved by the Anglo American Platinum-backed Hydrogenious Technologies, of Germany, which is entering the US market in partnership with United Hydrogen Group. In March, Impala Platinum launched a fuel cell forklift at its refinery in Springs, which can be recharged in a matter of minutes. These developments are boosting the bullishness around fuel cells, which have huge potential to drive demand for platinum.