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

Gwala: A Canadian company plans to build a new long-life low-cost platinum mine in Limpopo, where platinum products will be manufactured onsite, workers will receive high pay, the new State mining company will be asked to participate and black empowerment will be the broadest South Africa has ever seen.

Creamer: The company Ivanplats is coming for a licence in South Africa to mine next door to Anglo American Platinum’s very rich Mogalakwena mine.  Its really ticking all the boxes and coming through with all the aspirations that South Africans have.  Not only is it going to put this big investment in at a time when people are running away from platinum – it has raised R2,4-billion on the Canadian Stock Exchange – but, it is also wanting to do the right thing, and the key to this is the beneficiation.

They are saying that not only will they mine there safely – they promise not to kill anybody and they refer to their workers as being more like skilled surgeons the way they are going to train them – but they are also saying that this is coming up at a time of wildly consumptive prospects for platinum. 

They want to ensure that they manufacture products on site, looking to catalytic converters. They have got Japanese partners that are going to come in on that side of things.  They are also looking at platinum jewellery.  These are all the things that we have been aspiring to for so long. 

They are looking to the State mining company being a partner and they are saying that this black economic empowerment will be the broadest we’ve ever seen.  They are coming in for a licence so there has got to be a lot of positive talk, but you can see their conviction, and the people involved Robert Friedland, we know the fantastic success he has had at Voisey’s Bay in Canada where he walked away with more then $3-billion, and the fantastic success he has had in Mongolia, where he also came away with billions of dollars. 

Now, he is speaking very enthusiastically about South Africa and that he believes this is a good investment destination at a time where you see a lot of people walking away from it not even coming into it.  He is also very enthusiastic about platinum, at a time when others aren’t, saying that with urbanisation there is going to be huge demand because this is something that cleans the air in the cities.

Gwala: Support for the National Development Plan – South Africa’s first-ever economic blueprint – is the new rallying point around which the heavily divided mining industry is uniting.

Creamer: The mining industry is very heavily divided.  People are in separate corners and they are shouting at each other.  There is a common platform in the middle where they are all saying we back this and that is the National Development Plan (NDP). 

We saw that Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu made a strong plea for people to close ranks behind the NDP in her speech at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.  Then Anglo American, against which the government have directed all of their anger, is headed by Cynthia Carroll, who then said they must back the NDP. 

Then someone who is even more distant, Mamphela Ramphele, said the same thing, that we must come together behind the NDP.  This is now becoming a point from which people can actually bring in a new South Africa.  We know that this NDP is private-sector friendly. 

We know that this NDP has a 2030 vision, we’ve never had this before and that it wants to turn South African from a developing country into a developed country.  They are saying that mining, which staggeringly as we heard by the Mining Indaba, sustains the lives of 13,5-million South Africans. 

So mining touches a quarter of the population.  I don’t think there is any other country in the world where there is such a pervasion influence.  We are looking now for an inclusive economy and we can see that although players are shouting at each other they are moving on to a common platform now.

Gwala: South Africa is moving ever closer to the prospect of round-the-clock blast-free mining that will open the tap for millions of ounces of new gold to pour out of South Africa’s ultra-deep mines.

Creamer: When we first heard of this technology they said that there is a 30% chance that it will come through.  They are now saying that they are moving ever closer to the 70% point of bringing this in. 

There is no sticking point with this incredible round-the-clock mining that will mean mining is done in a fifth of the time.  It will be non-blast mining, peopleless stopes will be created, you’ll mine all day every day and you will just mine the gold and nothing but the gold.  The cash in the till will be really boosted.  So it is a leap right over mechanisation into automation and it means that that gold that is sterilised in our ground here, still 30% of the world’s gold is in South Africa, we can access this and we can access it in a way which is safe. 

This long-term view is becoming a short term view and we can then become equal in competition with the rest of the world.  South Africa only mines 270 days of the year. The World mines 365 days of the year.  We have got huge dilution that means we bring up rock that hasn’t got gold in it. 

That costs a lot of money and they are now replacing that with rock that will have gold in, which means that this will be a mouth-watering grade.  As they’ve gone deeper, they will now have a mouth-watering grade of 25 grams of gold per ton.

Gwala: I see Mark Cutifani has pulled no punches there closing the Indaba.

Creamer:  We are very lucky to have Mark Cutifani, because he is very realistic about the situation and he has robustness in his speech but he also presents a lot of opportunity for people to come together.  He comes here with no baggage from Australia and Canada and he sees the benefit from this country. 

He saw it from the start that is why he came here to lead AngloGold Ashanti.  He is now going to lead our biggest mining company, Anglo American, from mid-year, and he is saying that we can create a new South Africa out of this, that gets rid of poverty, inequality and it gets us back into a growth path. 

He can see it because he came in from the outside and he is leading the show.  We are very lucky to have him, not only as leader of our biggest mining company Anglo American, which as a whole has interests in iron-ore, coal and platinum, but we also see him as the president of our Chamber of Mines in South Africa, which is amazing. 

He has had a meteoric rise and we are lucky in South Africa to have Mark Cutifani.

Gwala: 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.