Mining companies are partnering South Africa’s Department of Transport in maintaining roads in the major coal transport areas of Mpumalanga. Read on page 19 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the department doing the same with mining companies in the Northern Cape and its intention to extend the partnership to other mining jurisdictions as well.

The activities are focused primarily on ensuring the safety of mine haul trucks that operate along Mpumalanga routes and in the Northern Cape. The Department of Mineral Resources was involved in the securing of funding from the Sishen iron-ore mine, in Kathu, to assist in the construction of roads in the Northern Cape.

The bulk of the capital raised to fund roads in Mpumalanga comes from environmental levies on State power utility Eskom, which are channelled to the National Treasury for allocation to the South African National Roads Agency and the Mpumalanga local government for road upkeep in the province.

Some ageing platinum-group metals (PGMs) assets in the Arctic may be spun off into a separately listed company that could have a value of $500-million to $700-million. Russian company OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel envisages the new company having a similar listing profile to its own, which is traded in Moscow and London.

Norilsk switched focus in 2013 to developing its longest-life and most profitable mines in Russia and selling its less lucrative international holdings. The Moscow-based producer, after completing the sale of African and Australian assets last year, is deciding what to do with smaller and older operations at home, suggesting an overhaul of operations.

The assets are in the so-called south cluster of the Polar division, including a nickel concentrator in Norilsk city, the nearby Medvezhy Ruchey opencast mine, the Zapolyarny mine and Lebyazhye tailings dam, which were built in the 1940s and have more than 20 years of reserve-based life left. The PGM content of 6 g/t is seen as quite appealing. The cluster generated about $600-million in revenues last year and $200-million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, according to Norilsk.

China’s Shenhua Group has been given the official Australian government thumbs up to develop a coal project in New South Wales. Read on page 44 of this edition of Mining Weekly of the project encompassing the building and operating of a ten-million-tonne-a-year, 30-year-life openpit mine, which is expected to employ 600 full-time employees during construction and 434 full-time employees during operation.

Although the Australian government has attached 18 conditions to the approval, including that a biodiversity plan be presented and approved by the Minister before the start of construction, along with a water management plan and a rehabilitation plan, opposition to the proposed mine has been quick to emerge, with the Australian Greens party condemning the project’s approval and accusing Australia’s federal government of placing overseas mining interests ahead of local farmers’ interests.

Environmental group Lock the Gate Alliance has been considerably harsher, saying that no amount of conditions placed on the project can disguise what the group regards as a project that will trash farmland and put water resources at risk.