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

Kamwendo: A hydrogen refuelling station has been handed over to Toyota at South Africa’s North-West University.

Creamer: This was fantastic. Hydrogen mobility and platinum group metals have been highlighted at North West University, by the handing over of the mobile hydrogen refuelling and the hydrogen generation system to Toyota South Africa Motors and also the opening of the rapid prototype training and testing facility.

Strongly reflected is the collaboration between the platinum group metals producer African Rainbow Minerals, the Department of Science and Technology, North West University and the South African National Energy Development Institute, Toyota, of course and Hydrogen South Africa – all collectively  advancing hydrogen innovation through electrolysis technology as part of South Africa's clean energy transition. When you see the world today is in such turmoil when it comes to energy, the Middle East crisis just going on and on, people fear that the price of fuel is going to rocket. We need to look at energy independence, in fact, in South Africa and one of the ways of doing it is going through the hydrogen route.

Kamwendo: As the storage of electricity becomes a major necessity, the world is discovering hydrogen to be the best solution.

Creamer: Now, this is coming through from Norway. This is in Oslo. The company Nel ASA has reported that hydrogen enables energy storage way beyond batteries. They just can't compare, because you store this hydrogen when your peaks are not there. So during the downturn of demand, you store hydrogen because you are getting it from the sun and the wind and the energy that you get from water as well.

You can store it at a time when there is no strong demand, but you can keep it for a week, a month, a year, two years. It just goes on and on, and you can store vast quantities of it. That hydrogen molecule can then be turned back into electricity, which you take up when you need it. The Norwegians are coming through with this message that hydrogen is the thing when it comes to storage, and hopefully we will also look at it here, because storage is key. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine and you don't always have electricity, so if you have got something in storage and turning those molecules back into electrons as is possible is going to be a wonderful route to take.

Kamwendo: The government and the mining companies must work together to cut the cost of railing manganese to the ports.

Creamer: We have got fantastic manganese here. We have got the best quality manganese in the world, but the problem is it is like 1 000 kilometres from the nearest port. We have got two routes at the moment. You know you have the normal one going through to Gqeberha and there is about the bulk of it goes through to Gqeberha and then you have also got the Saldanha port.

Now, the Saldanha port is probably the better of the exit ports, but no matter what happens, we have got to lower the cost of doing this, because we're getting competition now in the manganese world, and it's going to hot up. We need to make sure that we've got a future that is bright for logistics of manganese, the export of manganese and there are talks going on, serious talks now, to try and improve that route, to make sure that it is competitive globally, so that this great quality that we've got of manganese actually gets through to the world without logistics holding it up.

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