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: South Africa’s miners and China locked arms tightly this week at a major platinum event in Shanghai.

Creamer: Yes, it is called the Shanghai Platinum Week and can you believe a country like China, which doesn't mine an ounce of platinum, is so conscious of the importance of platinum that it stages the Shanghai Platinum Week. Now, virtually every major platinum company from South Africa was there. We had Minerals Council South Africa representatives there and a big clinching of arms was done, because China wants to ensure that it has got enough platinum, because it is moving into a green revolution. At the moment, you can see the investment in platinum is high. We saw platinum investment rise by 100% last month.

Also, they are going into jewellery at this stage, and they are also tightening up on the exhaust fume pollution in the country though the introduction of more stringent regulations to curb the emission of fumes from the exhaust pipes of vehicles powered by petrol and diesel. So even now, before you have got any green hydrogen or beyond the existing situation, they are tightening the laws, which is going to mean you have got use more platinum group metals to make sure that you don't pollute the air. But then further forward is the massive green hydrogen move that they planning to really revolutionise the whole place in China and that will require a lot of platinum. So, that is why they have the Shanghai Platinum Week and it will be there next year and the following year. It goes on and on. It’s great for South Africa as the biggest provider of platinum group metals.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s huge green hydrogen project in Nelson Mandela Bay this week took another major step forward.

Creamer:  The major step forward was the request for proposals. Now, that is an important part of a project, because the next step is the final investment decision. They got responses from Europe. They have got responses from the UK. They have got responses from the Far East from people who want to become involved in the engineering, the procurement and the construction. So, that is the request for information. This is how you build up your project, ahead of time, so that you can announce the final investment decision and you can go ahead. This will be great for Nelson Mandela Bay. T

his is where it is, the Coega Green Ammonia project, and the leader in this is Thulani Gcabashe. Now, we know Thulani Gcabashe as a former Eskom CEO. He is also the former Standard Bank chairperson. He has got BuiltAfrica, which is a renewable energy business. He has linked up with the UK firm Hive and Hive Hydrogen South Africa is led here by Thulani Gcabashe. It will be great investment of something like $5.8-billion, which is envisaged for what they call the first phase. So, it could be a fantastic export of green ammonia starting with the green hydrogen being convereted into green ammonia, which is used as a clean fuel in shipping.

Kamwendo: South Africa’s palladium can reduce South Africa’s high water treatment costs, researchers have found.

Creamer: At South Africa’s PGM Industry Day, that is the platinum group metals day in Johannesburg, which took place in April, a new research centre, the Palladium Center, said at the PGM Industry Day that they are finding that the platinum group metal product palladium can have so many more uses than it has currently and that is music to the ears of South Africa, because we want more applications for our platinum group metals.

Now, three months later, the Palladium Center has re-emerged and said, yes, we have already got one area in which palladium can improve things and that is in water treatment and water treatment is very important  to us in South Africa, because we need that disinfectant needed in the treatment of water to function as cost effectively as possible. The Palladium Center research team has now found that using palladium-coated electrodes can save a lot of energy and in saving a lot of energy, it saves a lot of cost.

Again, this is a new use for our platinum group metals and that is one of the things that came up in Shanghai, that just about every day, they are finding new uses for platinum group metals, which is such an important thing for the South African economy. We rely a lot on our platinum group metals mining industry here and the more applications that can be found for these very special metals, the better it is for our economy.

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