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: Gold is being taken out of the West Rand mine dumps in an impressive new R2.5-billion development project.
Creamer: This is great for the people Kagiso on the West End, and Krugersdorp. Finally, we are getting to a situation where gold is being taken out of these old dumps. It is hugely valuable. This will be done at 50 000 ounces a year, which will help the rand as it is exported. It is going to be a quick payback, which means that they are going to redevelop that land. They are talking about being a sparkling example of how you recover the gold and also restore the land. This is the Pan African Resources, listed in London and Johannesburg, investing in this with great enthusiasm, because they feel their return will be good. Their costs will only be about $1 000 an ounce, whereas they will get nearly double that when they sell their gold.
Kamwendo: A new opencast mine will begin producing platinum group metals in Limpopo by year-end.
Creamer: Yes, this is in Limpopo, in the Thabazimbi Municipal area. It is part of the Amandelbult mine and they have areas of that mine that they are modernising and now they have got an opencast one that will likely begin producing platinum group metals by the end of the year. They hope that will be the case and the permitting is going through now. The opencast Middelaagte mine opening will mean that the life of the Amandelbult mine will extend. This is also a long standing mine and is being modernised in a massive way.
Kamwendo: Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. He’ll be back with us at the same time next Friday.