On-The-Air (10/04/2015)

10th April 2015

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

Font size: - +

AMLive anchor Sakina Kamwendo on Friday presented another Update From The Coalface with Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s power problems are presenting platinum miners with a huge new growth opportunity.

Creamer:The platinum we’ve got in the ground can really be turned to fantastic advantage in this electricity crisis.  We know that the whole world is moving toward decentralised power, the platinum can give us that and we get it with fuel cells. We see now that the Chamber of Mines has taken the lead and the Minister of Trade and Industry is backing them there, Dr Rob Davies, they’ve put up their first 100 kilowatt fuel cell, which means they’ve got their own baseload power. They don’t rely at all on Eskom and this is what could happen around the world, because you can see that these are reliable, they are clean and noiseless. They’ve got hardly any maintenance, and we have got the secret, and that’s why everyone was there at the unveiling of the fuel cell at the Chamber of Mines. There were people from Japan, there were people from all over the world and our initiative is being lead by Mashudu Ramano, who is passionate about this and we’re saying that, you know, you can have additional demand for platinum, which is so important. We are the only people, with Zimbabwe, who have got this platinum in the ground, we could become the next Saudi-Arabia, with decentralised clean power, which is just what the world needs at the moment. The mining companies are having to do their own marketing at the moment, and we see that in Implats saying, “we’re going to put this into our refinery.” They are going to put 1.8 megawatt to start and go up to 22 megawatts. We see that Amplats is putting them into the underground locos. These can be in transport as well, it can be in your car, it’s an amazing opportunity, the window is wide open for hundreds, and thousands of jobs to be created, we are talking about transformation. This could be a transformative industry, lead by black South Africans, in South Africa, with the backing of the government. You can’t be national only in this, you’ve got to be international, and the Japanese were there, the ambassador, Fuji Electric, all saying, “look, if you’re going to do this, we will come to South Africa, we will help in this, we want to move.” This could change the world’s electricity, and this is not only on the big power and it’s not only in the car.  When we had the unveiling at the Chamber of Mines, all the sound, all the lighting and the screens in the open precinct, just in the open air, was powered by a fuel cell as big as a laptop, so you can go from huge to small.


Kamwendo: Black-controlled Exxaro has spent R250-million to turn polluted mine water into clean drinking water.

Creamer: We are talking about transformation here, here is a transformed company, Exxaro, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, that’s not empowered, it’s black controlled. This is done by Sipho Nkosi, done a fantastic job, he’s going to retire next year, he’s already got his successor in place, which means it will still be black controlled. So, we’ve got some fantastic examples of transformation in South Africa, and Exxaro is one of them.  Look at this, it’s taking the dirty mine water in Matla. Matla does an incredible job, supplies 12% of Eskom’s coal, we got the lights on through this, but it’s saying, “look, we’ve got dirty water under there, let’s do something about it.”  Turns it into clean water, R250-million worth, they don’t blink at the expenditure, taking out 10 million litres a day and 25% of that already going towards drinking water, both for the mine, because that’s how they purify to the full extent.  Going to the mine and to the community, now we saw that down the road, Anglo American and BHP Billiton, they did the same thing on an even bigger scale where they took the underground water that is filling the cavities, they mined out, and purified it and put into the local authority, where we know there is a forecast of a water shortage.  So here you have these companies coming forward and in that dirty water is also gypsum, and also a whole lot of metals and minerals.  We saw them take the gypsum out use that as the material for housing.  So, there’s so many different options here, we can see that at COP17 the only real environmental project that got the UN attention, and got a recommendation from the United Nations, was this activity in Mpumalanga where you get the mining companies, and now the black controlled Exxaro, spending R250-million to clean up the water and to put it back into the system, and what they don’t need into the Olifants River for farmers.


Kamwendo: Deprived former mineworkers have so far received R450-million in the drive to meet outstanding pension claims.

Creamer: This is something we are going to keep our eye on, because there’s so much money lying there, something like R6-billion and this must get out, because it can alleviate poverty in the region. We find that R450-million in outstanding benefits has now gone out, now that’s still a small part of the R6-billion and you can see that at least people are working at it and it’s also creating jobs, because they are actually hiring tracers to go out and find people, so they’ve traced like 9 000 people in South Africa, and they’ve paid 3 000 of those people out already, and they’ve also traced thousands more in the region. So here they’re saying, “98% of these claims are for men,” but really in the background it’s the women and the children.  So their also now going to try and locate the widows and the children, because these sort of payouts and benefits, have unfortunately got a legislative closure. If they don’t claim them in 24 months they say, “okay, it’s all over”, which shouldn’t be the case, so the government also have to come in on this act and say, “look, we’ve got to keep this going, we can’t close the door on this”, and they must bring in the Financial Services Board, which is a statutory body, to start formulating and making sure the paperwork is done, because the companies holding this money need paperwork.  They need paperwork to be processed before they can release this money, but we see that at least the Southern Africa Trust now is gaining some ground and they reported that a lot more communication is needed, a lot more activity is needed, but they are at least happy with R450-million being paid out to deprived ex-mineworkers.


Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. He’ll be back At The Coalface at the same time next Friday

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION