On-The-Air (20/01/2017)

20th January 2017

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

     

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

Kamwendo: Davos this week gave platinum fuel cells a huge boost with the launch of the massive Hydrogen Council.

Creamer: This was fantastic that they launched the Hydrogen Council at Davos, it was the place do it, it had all the big wigs there. It is an indication that hydrogen is seen as the answer to the low-carbon economy. If they see hydrogen as that answer, then they see fuel cells as the driver of that power.

If they go for fuel cells as the driver of that power, platinum benefits. If platinum, then South Africa benefits. That is a great line of attack that they put up there. We could see, in the background, Anglo American also among 12 other massive companies.

These are trillion dollar companies, just the companies alone employ about 2-million people. They are putting this foot forward, which says to have a no-carbon future here to deal with climate change and to make sure that two degrees Celsius temperature rise doesn’t happen, we must go into hydrogen and the governments must work with us.

We can show the governments how good this is, but the governments also have got to go with the infrastructure. If you look through the latest Time magazine that has just come out now, you will see plastered all over it is the hydrogen future, of course it was meant this edition to coincide with the Davos.

We can see momentum building up for a change in the way we drive our cars, in the way we have electricity at home and that can be done through the fuel cell. That can provide us with the power and also give our platinum industry a great boost.

Kamwendo: Sibanye’s audacious bid to buy America’s biggest platinum mines is poised to benefit Southern Africa enormously.

Creamer: This is fantastic that South Africans are looking beyond the platinum treasure test, this Aladdin’s Cave of treasure, that we have here in South Africa and in Zimbabwe.

They are saying that we also need to embrace other platinum endowments on the planet. We see Neal Froneman of Sibanye taking the lead there and being very audacious and giving them quite a nice premium for their shares he wants to take over. He is getting mines that are really producing well and are high grade in Montana.

We see that the board of Stillwater, which is the American company has said that this is a good deal, let’s go ahead with it. We saw yesterday all the anti-trust obstacles have been moved out of the way, so another step forward in possibly getting access to these assets in America by a South African platinum company. It is an important one, because the Stillwater deal runs deep.

It runs deep, because there is also an aspect about it that is not just mining, it is recycling. We know that platinum is not consumed, you can’t consume platinum. That is why the recycling aspect of it is something very important and it is an aspect that South Africans have not been following properly and that is why we have this low price. You can bring that platinum back on the market by recycling it.

This is what Stillwater does, half its platinum production is in recycling, it brings the scrap back onto the market. It also gives Sibanye an insight into that and the refining and smelting, because there are assets there that will take over and involve that.

Kamwendo: A second judge has chided the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) for ineptitude.

Creamer: The DMR has really got to pull its act together, because it has come against two judgements, which have exposed it as being inept and also irrational. We had the first one last year the Labour Court, they said, ‘you cant do what you are doing to our mines here. In the name of safety actually create unsafe conditions by closing huge mines, you have got to do it in the proportion to what the incident involves.’

It was so bad that the judges said that if you’d asked me whether these officials should be forced to pay their own way in this legal operation I would have granted you that. Now another judge has taken a big step and said that you have got foreign investments coming in here, they delineate big areas that are worth billions of rands and then you tell them they can’t go any further. The name of South Africa has been besmirched.

So what the judge took is a step and said he is going to grant the people the rights. He is not even going to leave it to them because they just drag their feet and allow the appeals to go on and on. Instead of giving it back to them he granted Aquila Steel the mineral rights, in the court.

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

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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