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Photo of Week
MOVING MOVIES MOOTED
By: Martin Creamer 27th March 2015 The Coalsafe 2015 conference, hosted by mining company Glencore, heard Mineral Resources Department chief inspector of mines David Msiza, above, reveal that consideration is being given to the compilation of documentaries to reflect the fatality horrors of mining’s past in order to propel the... →
THE BAKERY THAT COAL BUILT
By: Martin Creamer 20th March 2015 Black-controlled Exxaro Resources has implemented the Siyathuthuka Butterfield Bakery project as a local economic development initiative for the Emakhazeni community in Belfast, where it mines coal. The 100%-black-owned bakery is yet another example of the manner in which the South African mining... →
COLOURED SPARKLE
By: Martin Creamer 13th March 2015 Coloured gemstones are sparkling. Aim-listed Gemfields has generated revenues totalling $325-million from 18 emerald and beryl auctions since mid 2009, with this month’s emerald, beryl and amethyst auction netting $14.95-million. Headed by South African-born top brass Ian Harebottle, above, and... →
EFFICIENCY BOUNCE BACK
By: Martin Creamer 6th March 2015 Surface gold miner DRDGold is close to full restoration of metallurgical efficiencies at its Ergo plant near Brakpan on the East Rand, where new flotation and fine-grind (FFG) circuit technology is well on the way to achieving expected recoveries. From July, wastewater will also be used... →
INDIA WEIGHTED
By: Martin Creamer 27th February 2015 India, which has attractive fundamentals, is going to grow slower than China and from a much lower base, Vedanta CEO Tom Albanese is seen telling this month’s Mining Indaba. But if, as is projected in some circles, India’s gross domestic product doubles in next five years, the fortunes of... →
PALLADIUM PRICE SWAYERS
By: Martin Creamer 20th February 2015 Molten nickel is seen being poured at the Nadezhda metallurgical plant of the Norilsk Nickel company, which is located in the Arctic city of Norilsk, in Russia. Norilsk Nickel is the world's largest nickel and palladium mining company and has started pilot operations at its Arctic-based Talnakh... →
TROUGH YEAR
By: Martin Creamer 13th February 2015 Standard Bank international mining and metals head Rajat Kohli, above, and his team consider 2015 a trough year for commodity prices. On a three-year view, the bank favours precious metals over base metals and bulks. It puts the rise in the dollar gold price to 2018 on a steeper upward curve than... →
KANGALA PIT
By: Martin Creamer 6th February 2015 This opencast operation, the ASX-listed Universal Coal’s Kangala Colliery, is located in South Africa’s Witbank coalfield. The 2.4-million tons a year run-of-mine operation has an installed plant capacity that can be expanded to 4.25-million tons a year if required. Most of Kangala’s thermal coal... →
GRADIENT GUARD
By: Martin Creamer 30th January 2015 This tall slope stability radar system, which detects small movements with sub-millimetre accuracy, is seen at Sishen, the large Kumba Iron Ore opencast mine in the Northern Cape. The radar system, which monitors the pit walls, has the capacity to warn ahead of any impending danger. It scans at... →
HUNT AND BE HUNTED
By: Martin Creamer 23rd January 2015 Mid-tier gold producer Iamgold is hunting for acquisitions while at the same time being prepared to be hunted itself. CEO Steve Letwin, above, expects a deal to eventuate this year for the Canadian-based company, which has $500-million in cash from a Canadian mine sale. Iamgold may use these... →
IRON-CLAD FORECAST
By: Martin Creamer 16th January 2015 Vale CEO Murilo Ferreira is seen smiling broadly during an interview at the headquarters in Rio de Janeiro of the world’s biggest iron-ore producer, which predicts that iron-ore prices will rally by at least 24% in 2015, as high-cost mines shut and Asian infrastructure demand improves. Total... →
OFFTAKE SECURED
By: Martin Creamer 12th December 2014 Hancock chairperson and billionaire Gina Rinehart on site at the Roy Hill iron-ore project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The 67%-complete project is a joint venture with Korea’s Posco, Japan’s Marubeni and Taiwan's China Steel. A remote operations centre will strive to keep the... →
ALUMINIUM ALLIANCE
By: Martin Creamer 5th December 2014 New black-controlled start-up Isizinda Aluminium, which has acquired the Bayside aluminium casthouse from BHP Billiton, will receive 96 000 t of liquid aluminium a year from the Hillside smelter, for conversion into to slab for supply to the JSE-listed Hulamin, its 40% shareholder. Preparing to... →
THINK ZINC
By: Martin Creamer 28th November 2014 Capital expenditure of R8.7-billion is planned at the integrated Gamsberg-Skorpion mining-and-refining zinc project in the Northern Cape and Namibia in the next three-years by Black Mountain Mining, in which Vedanta’s Sesa Sterlite subsidiary holds 74% and South Africa’s Exxaro Resources provides... →
COAL COMFORT
By: Martin Creamer 21st November 2014 A pro-Russian separatist stands guard at a coal-mine in the village of Nizhnyaya Krynka, east of Donetsk, in troubled Ukraine. The mine has been restored after being damaged in a skirmish between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukraine’s part-volunteer National Guard. Russian State media claim... →
MIGHTY MECHANISATION
By: Martin Creamer 14th November 2014 Alarmed that nuclear curtailment has prompted German power utilities to burn the most coal in six years, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is now taking steps to restrict coal-fired power generation, which currently provides 45% of Germany’s electricity. This large excavator is seen at the... →
IRON WILLED
By: Martin Creamer 7th November 2014 The top brass of BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company, are seen arriving ahead of last months annual general meeting in London, which took place at a time of falling iron-ore prices but rising production. BHP Billiton’s own iron-ore output rose 17% in the three months to September 30.... →
MINE-MADE MADNESS
By: Martin Creamer 31st October 2014 Russian tungsten, molybdenum and copper mining created this cavity outside the town of Tuim in Khakassia, Russia, where a bungee jumper is seen plunging 120 m down the Tuimsky Proval, a deep technogenic intra-mountain pit on the site where the polymetallic ores were excavated. The five-second,... →
MULTI-VIEW PRESSURE
By: Martin Creamer 24th October 2014 Many viewpoints are pressuring new Minerals Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi, who is tasked with piloting amended minerals legislation through Parliament. The oil and gas lobby has personally convinced him that hydrocarbons legislation should be hived off separately from the Minerals and Petroleum... →
REVIVING TRADITION
By: Martin Creamer 17th October 2014 South West Britain’s 3 000-year mining history is being revived with the development in the area of what is set to be the world’s third-biggest tungsten mine. Drakelands, being developed by the ASX- and AIM-listed Wolf Minerals, will be Britain’s first new metal mine in 40 years. Photographed in... →
FUEL FROM OIL SANDS
By: Martin Creamer 10th October 2014 This Suncor processing plant on the Athabasca River, 90 km north of Fort McMurray, in Alberta, Canada, upgrades oil sands into refinery-ready crude oil and diesel fuel. After helping to pioneer the commercial development of oil sands in 1967, Suncor developed into an integrated energy company... →
WORKING TOGETHER
By: Martin Creamer 3rd October 2014 The Mozambican port and rail authorities plan to invest $3-billion to raise yearly throughput at Mozambique’s Maputo port to between 40-million and 50-million tons by 2020 and to migrate additional cargo from road to rail. Seen at the inauguration of the trinational Maputo Corridor Joint... →
RUSHIN' IN
By: Martin Creamer 26th September 2014 Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, is seen sharing a light moment with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the sod turning of their $3-billion, 250 000 oz/y Great Dyke joint venture platinum project in Darwendale, 50 km north-west of Harare, on land South African-controlled... →
NEW FACE OF INVESTMENT?
By: Martin Creamer 19th September 2014 The mix of mining and marketing is proving itself resilient to commodity price falls and the company catching the eye with that mix is the London-, Hong Kong- and now also JSE-listed Glencore, headed by Ivan Glasenberg, pictured here at question time during a media conference in Johannesburg, at... →
PRECIOUS METAL STRIKERS
By: Martin Creamer 12th September 2014 The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) last week embarked on a protected strike at the Rand Refinery in Germiston, the facility that has been refining gold since 1920. The refinery managed to secure a Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration pay agreement with... →
MINERS REMEMBER
By: Martin Creamer 5th September 2014 Broadly smiling Bolivian President Evo Morales is flanked by mining leaders Juan Carlos Trujillo, left, Miguel Perez, right, during a ceremony marking the March for Life in Calamarca, south of La Paz, to commemorate what 30 000 demonstrators did 28 years ago to protest the closure of State-owned... →
FARLAM COMMISSION
By: Martin Creamer 29th August 2014 South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, left, is seen arriving at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry, in Centurion, outside Pretoria, on August 11, where the Marikana killings, caused by police opening fire on striking miners at Lonmin’s platinum mine near Rustenburg, are being probed.... →
MINES' MINDS MEET
By: Martin Creamer 22nd August 2014 A meeting of the mines’ minds took place last week at the third annual Mining Lekgotla, the creation of a tripartite alliance that consists of representatives of government, labour and business. The alliance is symbolised in this picture by Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi in the... →
PLATINUM POWER
By: Chantelle Kotze 15th August 2014 Department of Mineral Resources Deputy Minister Godfrey Oliphant and Anglo American Platinum CEO Chris Griffith take part in the ribbon cutting at the world’s first platinum-based rural electrification fuel cell mini-grid project undertaken by JSE-listed platinum producer Anglo American Platinum... →
EPIC PROPORTIONS
By: Martin Creamer 8th August 2014 Opencast workings are shown in this picture of the Venetia diamond mine in Limpopo province, in the northeast corner of South Africa. Diamond mining company De Beers, an Anglo American group company, is currently undertaking a sizeable venture to convert Venetia from an opencast mine, which... →
SELF-INFLICTED PAIN
By: Martin Creamer 1st August 2014 BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie, seen speaking at a media conference in Sydney, expects China to cut more higher-cost domestic iron-ore output and make greater use of imported iron-ore, which Australian and Brazilian iron-ore producers are pouring into the market in an unusual exercise that... →
THE ABE & ABBOTT SHOW
By: Martin Creamer 25th July 2014 A Japanese Komatsu truck built with steel made from Australian iron-ore? That could well be a side aspect of this month’s Abe and Abbott show in which Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (second left) and Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott (second right) toured the West Angelas iron-ore mine,... →
EMPOWERED TO MINE AND TRADE
By: Martin Creamer 18th July 2014 Fifteen thousand already empowered diamond mineworkers have been empowered still further, this time as diamond traders. Anglo American-controlled De Beers has extended the 26% black economic empowerment of De Beers Consolidated Mines to also include De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa, the... →
RUSSIAN RAINBOW
By: Martin Creamer 11th July 2014 A rainbow forms beyond a transport helicopter used for transporting mine personnel as it stands on the shores of Lake Bolshoe Toko, near the Elga coal complex, operated by OAO Mechel, in Russia. The government and lenders have been in talks over how to enable Mechel, the nation's biggest coking... →
THE MINE THAT BASKS IN SUN ENERGY
By: Martin Creamer 4th July 2014 Chilean iron-ore miner Compañía Minera del Pacífico, a company in the Santiago-listed CAP group, has an agreement to buy energy from this Amanecer Solar CAP plant, which is situated in the municipality of Copiapo, in the Atacama Desert. Chile President Michelle Bachelet is seen inaugurating... →
LIMA LOGISTICS
By: Martin Creamer 27th June 2014 Private-sector company Transportadora Callao has officially opened a $163-million mineral concentrates shipping terminal at the port of Callao, west of Lima. There are plans for the Peruvian terminal’s initial capacity of 3.7-million tons in its first of year to reach six-million tons a year in... →
ZIMPLATS UPGRADE
By: Martin Creamer 20th June 2014 Workers return from a shift at Zimplats' Ngwarati Mine in Mhondoro-Ngezi, the Zimbabwe unit of the world’s second-biggest platinum producer Impala Platinum. Zimplats, with country peers Mimosa and Unki, is embarking on a $100-million project to refurbish the Selous basemetals refinery as part of... →
BAKUBUNG MILESTONE
By: Martin Creamer 13th June 2014 JSE-listed and China-funded Wesizwe Platinum’s 30-year-life Bakubung platinum mine near Rustenburg has reached a new milestone with the cutting of the first level of the ventilation shaft, 690 m below the shaft collar and 45 m above the first intersection of the Merensky reef. October 2015 is the... →
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