20/09/2013 (On-The-Air)

20th September 2013

  

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

Makwetla: Old-style colonial mining is no longer acceptable on the African continent.

Creamer: Old-style colonial mining where people just came in and dug out the riches is just a no go in Africa. We can see that from the adoption from the African Vision Document and also the adoption from the Economic Development Report Africa 2013. They are looking for something that is far more acceptable, they are looking for something where there is value addition.

It is not Africa but also South Africa singing from that hymn sheet. For it to be successful of course all 52 countries, or the mineral rich countries in Africa, are going to have to do things together. They seem to want to do things together. They are looking for not only beneficiation in our sense that we have thought well that people process a metal and mineral and refine it is part of the beneficiation and that is acceptable. They want a step beyond that they are really looking for manufacture.

They want involvement in all six parts of mining, the exploration, extraction, processing, beneficiation, manufacture and marketing. They are looking for those forward linkages, backward linkages, side linkages so that they can give the African people the best benefit. At the basis of all this and particularly South Africa at the basis of all this is our law, which says those metals and minerals in the ground belong to the people of South Africa. They don’t belong to the government, they belong to the people.

So now, mining companies have got this first level of risk that they have got to consider. They have got to know that they can do things that benefit the people. It is no good investing and later saying that they didn’t realise this.

This must be their starting point. It is becoming the mantra as we saw at the ferrochrome conference in Johannesburg, where Ben Turok, the ANC MP, laid this out for an international audience that the starting point for these assets, the metals and minerals in the ground belong to the people of South Africa and that is the first risk they must overcome.

Makwetla: Yet another call was made this week for mining robots to be used in South Africa’s deep, dark and dangerous mines.

Creamer: Another call has been made for these mining robots to be used in South Africa’s mines. We know we’ve got these deep dark and dangerous mines where people really shouldn't go.

They are not talking at this global mining technology forum at Johannesburg this week about shedding jobs. That is not the intention. The intention is actually to create wealth through technology that is going to benefit everybody and elevate people into higher skilled jobs and higher paying jobs. They are saying that robots are out there ready to roll into the South African mines.

They needn’t begin in places where people are working currently they can go into areas where people would not be allowed to work because they are unsafe. This could be the starting point. They are saying, lets take these first baby steps so that we can start creating wealth on the one side through technology that can sustain our existing operations. We know that even locally we have the CSIR talking about these robotic solutions that they got to enhance safety.

That is the first thing they are talking about, the safety, besides the productivity, it's the safety aspect that is so key. We know that our CSIR, which is government owned, is looking to also creating robots that can mine these very narrow stopes, the narrow reefs where people shouldn’t go. In fact along that route, we have also got the gold and the hard rock people and the platinum rock people are saying that they have got their own solutions where they can actually mechanically cut out areas where people shouldn’t be in.

They have been mined out and have the pillars, but there is still a lot of gold there and platinum and they can get it out in a way that they can backfill and make it safe. They can get the gold and only the gold all the time, safely. We see these steps being taken now towards a completely new paradigm in South Africa.

It has come about through the crisis we have in mining that always focuses the mind and the lower prices people are getting for their commodities.

Makwetla: South Africa’s once mighty ferrochrome industry is facing huge difficulties.

Creamer: This is a sad story because ferrochrome industry was where you could have an example of beneficiation. Here we are saying that we want beneficiation, but with ferrochrome it is a beneficiated product.

You lift the value several times, six to seven times, from the raw ore. So, the raw ore is the chrome and you uplift it to ferrochrome and you create for every 1 000 tons 17 jobs where as for every 1 000 tons on the raw chrome only 5 jobs.

So from a job point of view it is important, but from a revenue point of view, our ferrochrome industry was an industry that employed 200 000 people and it generated R42-billion worth of gross-domestic product. You are putting that into the economy, R42-billion a year and it is having its knee-caps smashed. We are seeing it contract before our very eyes.

We are losing those exports. Why? Because we haven’t got power, we haven’t got that electricity. At this week’s ferrochrome conference they were quizzed and saying how come you haven’t got that power?  What happened? Surely you had some foresight?

They were saying in the early nineties to 1995 with the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the RDP programme, they had allocated money to go into electricity, but along come the IMF and the World Bank and said that you have got to have a structural economic adjustment programme.

So they took their eye off that ball and used the Gear programmer to replace the RDP programme and that ruined our outlook for power.

It is only now with the National Development Plan that we got it back and the government is saying that they will help with the export and get the products out, but they also want as a quid pro quo, the use of some of that mined material to make a local contribution in manufacturing and beneficiation. That seems to be the deal coming through at the moment.

Makwetla: 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.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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