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: Martin, pleasure to have you with us. South Africa's Kumba Iron Ore is showing South African's how to beat the global recession and create jobs in a downturn. How so?

Creamer: Kumba Iron Ore mines iron-ore in the Northern Cape and is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. It has become an example of how to fight the global recession in producing iron-ore into the global market. In the half year it has increased its exports by 30%. Its exports to China were 50% of its total and is now 80%. While we were enjoying our Christmas December break and probably reclining on the beach, their marketers were working it out with the Chinese and this has paid off handsomely. You can see even going into the second half, they've got to avoid getting into an over-sold position and this is how the company is really pumping cash.

It's had tremendous cooperation from Transnet. Transnet has seen that the iron-ore has got down to Cape and they've given them additional stockpiling facilities. Tremendous cooperation with even the Chinese port authorities to get additional stockpiles going. While other companies in the world, their competitors, were cutting back - the Brazilians were cutting back, the Australians were cutting back - the South Africans refused to cut back and it's paid handsome dividends.

Modise: And the mining company Anglo Platinum ploughing R100-million into local jobs, creating platinum beneficiation?

Creamer: Beneficiation is the magic word. We have two-thirds of the world's platinum resources, but we do not do much with that platinum within the country. Now the government and big business want to change that.

Anglo Platinum is ploughing R100-million into a fund to assist with beneficiation and when we say value addition like that, we say jobs, because that's what it creates when you go downstream. The idea is to exploit this platinum, which we must remember is a ‘green' metal at a time when green is being demanded in the world against climate change and they want some form of downstream activity and innovation now, both the government and Anglo Platinum, into very important items like fuel cells. Fuel cells are going to be the engines of the future, they have the potential to drive our cars and they do not produce any of the pollution that we associate with car driving at the moment. The big by-product from fuel cells is water and the fuel cells produce the electricity to drive the car.

They also want to see some sort of beneficiation with platinum jewellery, because when the platinum price is down, jewellery sales increase so you can have that mix. This is what is being worked out now by Anglo Platinum and the government in the form of the Department of Mineral Resources and also the Department of Science and Technology.

Modise: And, another step being taken in the building of South Africa's large new radio telescope, in the Northern Cape.

Creamer: Yes, we've been watching that radio telescope project quite closely but we've been hoping for some sort of action on the ground. And now, the action has come. The first of the KAT-7 dishes. The radio telescope KAT-7 is the starting point of the big radio telescope hub in the Northern Cape, the first dish is now up and tests will begin on that first dish. They'll start with what they call KAT-7, that means that there will be the Karoo Array Telescope seven of the dishes and each dish that they put up, they'll do tests so that's a precursor to the MeerKAT which consists of 80 dishes. It'll move from seven dishes to 80 dishes. Of course, MeerKAT is a play on the Afrikaans word meer, meaning more, and KAT, in this case the Karoo Array Telescope, but, of course, the meerkat is the famous mammal that we have in South Africa, which has tremendous eyesight and very good hearing, and that is what will typify this radio telescope hub in the Northern Cape as it probes the mysteries of the universe.

But the big prize is the SKA project, that is, the Square Kilometre Array project. They want to move from the KAT-7 to the MeerKAT and then to the SKA project, consisting of 3 000 dishes. This will be the biggest world radio telescope and the most sensitive radio telescope hub in the world and it will also mean a lot of investment coming into this area in terms of billions of rands coming into the country but also in people terms. We'll have the best scientists and the best engineers focusing on this area. But, we've first got to beat the Australians. We will build the KAT-7, we will build the MeerKAT, which is up to 80 dishes, but with the 3 000-dish, big project, we've got to beat off the Australians first. By 2012, that decision will be taken and half of these 3 000, from our point of view, will be from the Northern Cape and then South Africa, generously, will be dishing out the radio telescope stations to surrounding countries. Namibia will get some, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya and Zambia also being part of this massive world project for radio telescopes to probe the mysteries of the universe.

Modise: That's Martin Creamer, the publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. He will be back At the Coalface at the same time, next Friday.