On-The-Air (18/11/2016)

18th November 2016

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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

Kamwendo: Black-controlled company Thakadu is building a R200-million nickel beneficiation plant as part of its second major initiative in as many months.

Creamer: Keep your eye on Thakadu, which has just popped up. It is black-led and headed by Ruli Diseko, Soweto-born and only 33 years old and already has done two big deals. The second one really fascinates me and this is the R200-million nickel beneficiation plant, which he is doing together with Lonmin.

This man is bright, he sees possibilities in the technical arena, because we know that the lithium-ion batteries are really hitting the high spots now and that is as a result of another South African Elon Musk in America pushing this electric car using lithium-ion batteries. Diseko was quick to latch on to that and find out what goes into these ion batteries and what they need. Of course, he found out that the batteries need purified high-grade nickel sulphide. Where do you get that nickel sulphide? You find that Lonmin is just wasting this in one of it streams.

Diseko has come along and said he is going to do a study on it. He got Mintek involved the State research body and came up with a busy plan and he is deep into a bankable feasibility study now, which should be completed by the middle of next year to capture the very valuable nickel sulphide stream that was going to waste to purify it and sell it into the markets.

He has done a good market research and it will go into Japan, Korea and China where the capacity is to build the lithium batteries. This is the second big deal his done in two months.

Last month we heard that he had bought 26% of ChromTech for R52-million. ChromTech is also very active in recovering chrome, so you have got these dumps that have got chrome in it and these people come in and recover it. He is working with them.

His company also trades, so he doesn't actually only beneficiate these metals and minerals, but he then trades them internationally. I am going to keep my eye out for Ruli Diseko.

Kamwendo: The Labour Court this week tore a strip off the Department of Mineral Resources for irrationally bringing mines to a wasteful halt.

Creamer: We have been worried about these Section 54 notices in the mines for a long time. The mines in particularly have been worried about them like gold and platinum mining companies, because the inspectorate comes in and finds something faulty, says it is a safety hazard and closes down on the whole mine.

But, they do it in a way that would be similar to an infringement perhaps being found on a freeway, maybe the off-ramp at Empire road has got a slight infringement something is happening there or potential danger for a crash. What these inspectors do is they come in and they close down the whole freeway as it where. If you do it in freeway sense you would be closing down from Pretoria to Vereeniging.

That is what they do in these underground mines. People have been very concerned about this for a long time, because we really need to earn our foreign exchange. You need to produce the gold and export it and they are holding all that up. So finally one company has been brave enough to take this to the courts and that is AngloGold Ashanti.

They went through urgently to the Labour Court, the labour judge took a look at this and said this is outside the bounds of rationality and has got to stop. He was so harsh that he said that if the legal team had requested that the legal costs be paid not just by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), so the government and us, but if they requested that these officials had to pay the legal costs in their personal capacity, he would have considered it.

This is how out of line this region seems to be. It is the second time the courts have cautioned it and the Labour Court referred to that saying that they haven’t heeded the past warning. It is not good for safety or anybody. No circumstances existed to conclude that the entire mine was unsafe, so the punishment must fit what you are trying to prevent.

My reading, said the judge, is that you are acting outside of the bounds of rationality. Now, this is what people have been thinking for a long time and now a judge has put it into words. We don’t know whether the DMR is going to appeal this, but it certainly is the first shot fired over the bow.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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