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: Trial mining has begun at a new platinum group metals project in Limpopo.

Creamer:  This is great news for South Africa. We can see that the platinum price is rising, because there is a shortage of platinum and a very good demand coming out of China in particular. So, people are looking at getting new mines going and the one they are looking in Limpopo is called Sandsloot and that is going to be an underground mine. Underground mines, of course, are normally more expensive, but this one is very, very promising.

It has got a very high reef wall and it will allow for mechanised mining. In fact, bulk mechanised mining and with a high grade they are looking for very high value. This is owned by Valterra. It used to be part of Anglo platinum, but of course, it is now primary listed in Johannesburg, secondary listed in London. This Sandsloot will be an underground with Mogalakwena. Now, Mogalakwena mine is an opencast mine, also owned by Valterra, which is operating at the moment and it is the world's best platinum mine. So, to go underground, they are hoping that they are going to get a lot of value out of this and that will be great for South Africa.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s iconic diamond company De Beers is setting itself up as a standalone global business.

Creamer:  Probably De Beers should always have been a standalone entity, because when it comes to diamonds, you need to stand alone. The market goes up and the market goes down. You need to be able to cope with all that, but it was absorbed into Anglo American. Now, with the simplification of Anglo American they are going to allow De Beers to exit and they have got two routes for the exit.

The first one, which is preferred, is that this company is bought by a trade setup that knows about diamonds and that will do a great job with this. They are already in formal talks with a lot of people around purchasing, but at the same time, they have got to look after their shareholders, because those people who want to buy now because the market is down, they might not want to pay as much as they should. They also going to look at a stock exchange and all this is in motion at the moment, and we should see some activity within this year and next year.

Kamwendo: Even in these tough times, South Africa’s iron-ore is in great demand because of its world-beating quality.

Creamer: It’s fantastic that South Africa has great quality in a lot of its mines and one of them out our high-quality Kumba Iron Ore mine, in Northern Province. If you look at the prices that Kumba got in a half year its iron-ore these prices were 8% above the world benchmark. There are companies in the world who say, I will pay 8% more for South African iron-ore because it has got such high quality, and it also helps buyers to lower carbon emissions, which the world is anxious to do to mitigate climate change.

The high quality in the first instance is helped by nature, because the Northern Cape allows you to have the lumpy ore that is sought after, but it is also helped by human ingenuity, because what Kumba is doing is taking waste and it is going through a technology process which adds value to that waste and people are also paying a premium price for that product. Both are in demand, but helping too is the public-private partnership, because the rail-and-port logistics has improved. Although Kumba had better prices and we saw that the cash flow was huge in the half year and the dividend was big, they also had higher exportation, because Transnet helped them with the rail and the port logistics to get more out to the market for the benefit of South Africa as well.

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