Junior miners facing greater challenges in current economic climate
The global economic slowdown has had a significant impact on the local junior mining industry, Wesizwe Platinum projects executive Jacob Mothomogolo says, noting that it had resulted in low demand, low recoveries, rising input costs and companies losing market share and value.
Speaking at the Junior Indaba, in Johannesburg, last week, he said that the local mining industry faced “huge and integrated complex” challenges, including “socioeconomic demands the miners were constantly faced with, ever-rising wage increases and increasing regulatory reforms”.
This, Mothomoglo said, required the industry to take drastic steps to ensure its resilience in a tough market, including job shedding.
He added that, with only 50% of platinum- group metals (PGMs) project reserves having been commissioned since 2007, mostly in the junior space, and overall capital demand for $14.3-billion to bring 185-million ounces of PGMs into production before 2030, junior miners were facing “huge competition for project development capital”, globally and in South Africa.
To survive in the current economic climate, Wesizwe had approached the international market for opportunities and price competitiveness. “We are also investigating different processes, mining models and philosophies and reviewing the baseline assumptions of the initial ten years of contract mining,” he noted.
“We will do these exercises every 12 months. We have already completed one of those exercises. Our project values will continually be assessed,” Mothomogolo noted.
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