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: Government and business are establishing a joint project to boost the export of South African coal.

Creamer: It is fantastic the way the public sector and the private sector are working together in coal. It could be an example for all other sectors, because not only have they improved their performance this year by about 10% by collaborating, but they are now saying we will sit down and do projects together. There are so many opportunities they see that could really uplift our coal exports, which is so important for our economy. So that sort of collaboration is really worth following, I think, by all other sectors.

Kamwendo:  Automation has been introduced to great effect at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal without any retrenchments.

Creamer: That is right, the big thing was zero retrenchments. And this is what they have succeeded in doing with a stacker reclaimer there, which is fully automated, but there have been no job losses at all. It is working at such efficiency that it is already at about 6.8% up, and they are looking to 8% to 10% improvement. But environmentally, this also cuts down on the dust, which is a point to work on as well.

Kamwendo: One of South Africa’s biggest empowered companies is taking a major step into manganese mining.

Creamer: You have had Exxaro, which has been big in coal. They have been looking at renewable energy and succeeding in renewable energy, but they want to extend that. We saw this week another advance was made in their move into manganese, and this will be in the Kalahari where they will be acquiring assets from other companies, and working jointly with other companies, to get more manganese exports out of South Africa. This will be, then another manganese portion that is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which is very good, so that we can get regular reportage. They will be working with a company that is listed in Australia, but it is much better to have a company listed in South Africa, so we can also see clearly what is happening on the manganese front.

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