Government’s support for the national platinum strategy is encouraging, says Royal Bafokeng Platinum CEO Steve Phiri.

In an interview with Mining Weekly after reporting before-tax profit of R316-million in a presentation of turned-around 2018 financial results, Phiri expressed appreciation of government’s willingness to be a participant in making the best out of South Africa’s world-leading platinum endowment.

“It’s encouraging that government now has come to the party and said: ‘We like your strategy; we want to be a player with you’, and nothing could be better than that,” Phiri commented.

Minerals Council South Africa has released a high-road scenario for the South African platinum group metals (PGMs) mining sector, which involves mining contributing R8.2-trillion to South Africa’s economy by 2050.

“That strategy has been developed at a platinum leadership forum, which consists of CEOs of platinum companies, facilitated by the Minerals Council, and you’ll see fuel cell market development, jewellery market development, investment market development, coins, all the ornaments that could be made out of platinum and trading it as bullion,” Phiri outlined to Mining Weekly.

He said it was time for South Africa to join the world’s move to hydrogen infrastructure, especially with the current substantial use of air-polluting diesel standby generators.

“We’re using a lot of diesel in standby generators, generating power from standby diesel generators when we could be using fuel cells, which are environmentally friendly,” he said, adding that the country was trailing behind the rest of the world when it came to platinum-catalysed hydrogen fuel cell application.

The new national platinum strategy document calls for the recruitment of a full-time industry champion to achieve the real potential of South Africa’s PGMs mining sector.

The Minerals Council envisages such a champion coordinating small leadership teams to drive specific PGMs advocacy and market development processes.

To implement the strategy, it also wants the development of comprehensive advocacy and brand strategies with a built-in yearly review process.

As was pointed out by Minerals Council CEO Roger Baxter at last month’s Investing in African Mining Indaba, 13% of the 253 t of PGMs produced in South Africa last year was sold to local fabricators, who produced 9% of the world’s platinum catalytic converters – a factor often overlooked.

This downstream fabrication industry earned R90-billion in revenues, employed 167 000 people directly, paid more than R40-billion in salaries and wages, and more than R1-billion in royalties, as well as many other different taxes.

However, the reality is that, over the past ten years, the PGMs industry has been in crisis and is only now emerging from the doldrums.

By 2050, instead of it being a $10-billion-a-year industry, the aspiration is to establish collaborative partnerships that drive demand at industrial, catalytic converter, jewellery and investment levels that will increase yearly revenues to $50-billion.

“That would be a significant game changer for the economy as a whole. “By growing the global demand base, we could see a significant change in fortunes,” Baxter told Mining Weekly.

But to realise PGMs’ potential requires a clear vision, an effective strategy and bold action from all key stakeholders.

For that reason, the Minerals Council has spoken to Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe to set up a small leadership team to seek co-matching funding to finance the Platinum Guild International and the World Platinum Investment Council.

Such co-contribution by business and government would help South Africa to realise a national resource in the national interest.