The mining industry used to talk a lot about hedging but these days streaming is the new phenomenon. Unlike hedging, which involves providing mined product at a fixed price into the future, streaming goes further by forward selling unmined ore – an indication of the current need in mining to raise cash quickly. Timetables are also absent and buyers of streamed metals take it as it comes, benefiting on the upside if mining takes place faster than expected and accepting the downside risk potential if it does not. As can be read on page 13 of this edition of Mining Weekly, Glencore’s wholly owned Anani Investments has done a streaming deal with Silver Wheaton for delivery of silver produced at the Antamina mine, in Peru, as part of Glencore’s earlier- announced debt reduction plans. The advance payment in streaming represents the prepayment – in Gencore’s case $900-million – of a portion of the purchase price for metal equivalent to a fixed percentage of future precious metals production from the mine. A stream does not carry any fixed yearly delivery obligations, only a percentage of actual production from the mine and there is no requirement for the mine owner to change how it manages the mine’s operation.

The future of platinum mining company Lonmin is looking grimmer. Shareholders, faced with the company’s requirement of $400-million in equity capital, are taking fright, with management indicating to them that without more equity capital, operations will have to be downsized to stay afloat. Read on page 9 of this edition of Mining Weekly of Lonmin management already doing virtually everything within their control to take the company off the knife edge on which it finds itself. In its latest communication with its shareholders, the London- and Johannesburg-listed company reported an exit of 2 978 workers, with a workforce down from 38 292 last year to 35 669 now and about to fall by another 3 000. Capital expenditure is being slashed and unit costs are being improved but this has not stopped the share price from continuing to fall along with the dollar price of platinum itself, which plummeted 30% in the fourth quarter, brining the rand basket price 15.3% down with it.

With mining’s woes widespread, Mining Weekly reports on page 34 of this edition on the “grave” current state of the mining sector in Zambia, where the Zambia Chamber of Mines describes the attention given to mining in the country’s 2016 National Budget as being at odds with the need to apply “urgent and decisive” restorative measures to the industry. The chamber makes it clear that it remains committed to the process started by the Zambian government to discuss urgent solutions to avert the ongoing crisis, which, if not managed resolutely and urgently, would result in continued job losses.

Also read of a break in gold-mining continuity now being inevitable as a result of the slashing of exploration expenditure on page 12 of this edition of Mining Weekly. “It’s only a question of when,” says Gold Fields CEO Nick Holland, who points out that it currently takes 18 years to get a mine from grassroots exploration through to production, compared with ten years a decade ago, and that the average reserve life of gold mines is now down to 13 years.