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Platinum fuel cells to power five-million Japanese homes – Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe Mines chairperson Robert Friedland

Ivanhoe Mines chairperson Robert Friedland

Photo by Duane Daws

11th February 2015

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Japan was building platinum-using fuel cells to provide clean electricity and heat to 5.3-million homes, Ivanhoe Mines executive chairperson Robert Friedland told the Mining Indaba on Wednesday.

Japan was also planning to run the Tokyo Olympics on fuel cells to showcase the arrival of the hydrogen economy.

It had also become mandatory for all Japanese government cars to be hydrogen fuel cell driven to ensure cleaner air, which was a growing imperative in a world where 66% of people would be living in cities by 2050.

Platinum-group metals (PGMs) were absolutely critical to having cleaner air, Friedland said in outlining the progress being made at Ivanhoe’s rich Platreef PGMs and nickel project on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa’s Limpopo province, where Japanese government agencies are 10% shareholders.

To show the growing use of PGMs in everyday products, he flashed on to a large screen pictures of fuel-cell driven Toyota and Honda cars as well as fuel-cell-powered smartphone chargers, before going on to provide detail on Ivanhoe’s upcoming Platreef project, where a Stage 2 drilling programme has firmed up 78-million ounces of mechanically mineable PGMs and substantial nickel at a depth of 700 m.

The flatness of the average 24-storey-high orebody provides 360 degrees of mining flexibility, not dissimilar to the potash mines of Canada, where Ivanhoe – which has indicated that it will list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange – is already listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Platreef, which has been engineered as a bord-and-pillar mine using trackless equipment, expects to be a zero fatality operation.

“South Africa is a very lucky country to have a mine like this,” Friedland said of Platreef, which will obtain its power from Eskom’s delayed new Medupi power station for production at a low cash cost of $322/oz.

A 800-m-deep shaft with a 7.26-m-diameter is being sunk as part of the $260-million Japanese cofunded project, which will create 700 jobs and which has secured a level three broad-based black economic-empowerment (BBBEE) status, Platreef MD Dr Patricia Makhesha told the 7 000 mining professionals attending the conference.

Ivanhoe Mines owns 64% of the Platreef mine, with the financial backing of a Canadian teachers’ retirement fund; the 150 000-strong Mokopane community owns 26% as the BBBEE partners, and the Japanese own 10% as offtake partners.

Of the 26% BBBEE shareholding, 20% is held by ordinary citizens, 3% by entrepreneur suppliers and 3% by nonmanagerial employees.

Steps are being taken to include the near-mine community in preferential procurement to bring historically disadvantaged South Africans into the economic mainstream.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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