Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Tim Modise speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Modise: March 25 has been set as the date on which South Africa’s Sumbandila satellite will be blasted into space.  Where is this going to be taking place and how?

Creamer: This is going to be at a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan which the Russians still lease.  It will be blasted in by the Russians.  It is a famous cosmodrome where the first satellite ever went into space and the first person ever went into space.

This is South Africa’s first State-owned satellite.  Of course, our first satellite launch was of a privately owned satellite and built by Stellenbosch University and in 1999 they put it into space.  It was also an earth orbiting satellite, as this will be.

So, the State has finally decided that South Africa must come in and have its own national satellite.  The Department of Science and Technology has this and it will be about 81 kg in weight.  It will be the secondary pay load on this Russian blast into space which will be make use of this Soyuz Rocket.

The Russians will also be putting up their own weather satellite.  Our particular satellite, a low-earth orbiting satellite, will have an imager on it, also made in South Africa.  The wonderful thing about it is that it is all made in South Africa by SunSpace, which is a spin-off from Stellenbosch University.

It will have an imager on which will be capable of imaging pictures back to which will show us what is happening from 500 km away.

Modise: Black-controlled coal miner Exxaro says it wants to be allowed to rail its own coal in partnership with the State-owned Transnet, which is losing foreign exchange by failing to rail sufficient quantities.  How is the deal going to work?

Creamer: You see, we saw Eskom allowing the private sector in.  When they ran into capacity problems, they created independent power producers (IPPs).

Now, Exxaro is looking to a similar framework for private sector coal-miners, so that they can get their coal mined out of South Africa and earn South Africa foreign exchange.  Because, it is an opportunity loss.  We see a privately owned port at Richards Bay, we see a State-owned rail, and never the twain meet.

If we are lucky, we will export about 63-million tons of coal, but the port is able to cope with 76-million, so we are losing out on the potential export at a time when coal prices are quite high.  They have come down, but there is still good demand for coal.

We need to start developing a way to make sure that we export to the capacity of the port.  That port capacity next year will go up to 91-million tons.  It doesn’t seem as though we are going to get there.  Again, we are going to lose out on potential exports at a time when our current account deficit is pretty worrying.

We need to export every bit of item that we can and Exxaro and its executive general manager Mxolisi Mgojo is saying let’s get together and form a framework where we can work together.  Exxaro is prepared to invest in this railway line, because it is in its interest.

They are prepared to put wagons on with coal, let us do it and let’s managed the whole thing in the same way as Eskom has allowed the private sector in.  Let Transnet allow the private sector in, so that we can maximise our exports.

Modise: Going to mining.  The first gold to be mined under the city of gold in a 100 years has been poured at the Rand Refinery.

Creamer: Yes, 122 years ago George Harrison come along.  He stumbled upon gold in South Africa and we became the golden city here in Johannesburg.  The early pioneers, of course, worked furiously to get gold out.  Suddenly they became fussy because there were happier hunting grounds in the Free State, and they could move out.

So, they abandoned a lot of these operations, but they left behind 35-million ounces of gold.  Clever company, Central Rand Gold, listed in London and Johannesburg Stock Exchange, they have come in and started to relook at Consolidated Main Reef.

They will also look at City Deep, Robinson Deep and all these old names and bring them back to life.  Already, before Christmas we have seen a pour of gold.  So the first gold from under the Golden City.  While we are still hustling and bustling on the surface, people are getting in and getting that old gold out.

We had the first pour and they are quite ambitious, because they are looking to 2010 perhaps going up to 100 000 ounces of gold produced a year.  By 2012 maybe even a million ounces of gold a year coming out here.

It will be all modern technology, mechanised mining, low noise blasting.  There will be no dumping, so we won’t see dumps coming up.  Waste is continually backfilled.  So, here we are getting, out of the old workings, new gold, that is helping us in our exports as well, getting the gold out of the country and again earning foreign exchange at a time when we need to earn every bit of foreign exchange we can.

Modise: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.