JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Valterra Platinum, South Africa’s impressive 2025 platinum group metals (PGM) creation, is bringing its inaugural 2025 year to a massively fruitful close with a market capitalisation that has sky-rocketed to north of R300-billion.

Since demerging from Anglo American mid-year, the value of this strongly performing instant stalwart is up just shy of 100% on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), and also up 60% on the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

“We’re absolutely delighted at how Valterra has played itself out,” an upbeat Valterra Platinum CEO Craig Miller told journalists attending the company’s year-end media event on Friday.

“It's been a year defined by both confidence and delivery,” Miller noted, after Valterra Platinum executive head corporate affairs and sustainability Yvonne Mfolo, in her introduction, had described the PGMs sector as being “technically complex and absolutely critical to the South African economy and to growth”.  

On the factors that helped Valterra to become the fourteenth largest company on the JSE, Miller put “coherent strategy” on the top of the list of what had helped to remove the uncertainty surrounding Anglo American’s demerger decision and, moreover, PGM prices failing to fairly reflect the real market tightness.

“I'm pleased to say that we predicted that the prices would rise, and they did. But I think the real driver for us – and how we look to the future – is continuing to build that credibility as a company – and as an organisation – and remaining focused on delivering what we say we're going to deliver.

“We're not going to give you a production or cost update or anything like that, but our firm commitment is to continue to deliver to our shareholders and to all our stakeholders around what we're going to do as a company,” Miller outlined, while also being forced to acknowledge that “the world around us is shifting, and we've certainly seen a lot of geopolitical shifts this year”.

Regarding the domestic front he added that “we've certainly seen changes in terms of how the energy transition is going to play itself out and we've certainly said before that it's not going to be just one size fits all, and I think that's starting to play itself out.

“We've certainly seen the scramble for critical minerals, and where PGMs feature on the critical minerals list. Therefore, it’s going to continue to give us confidence about just how amazing the important properties of PGMs are and the uses that they can have in so many economies globally, and therefore, as a consequence of that, how we then invest capital back into our business.

“We've certainly had a more vocal and more demanding public and that includes our communities, and we certainly hope to demonstrate how we engage with the issues at hand, and how we try to lead and create solutions for those issues.

“We've seen the rapid impact of technological disruption and the opportunities a new technologically advanced world will have and the role that PGMs can play,” Miller told the journalists attending the year-end event.

Also at home, Mining Weekly can report that Valterra Platinum has been engaging with Minerals Council South Africa and other peers regarding chrome tax and chrome quotas, and what that could mean for the PGM industry.

The company has also worked collaboratively at public sector and private sector levels regarding the proposed amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act and will keep ongoing sight of what the beneficiation chain can bring for South Africa as well as the jobs that need to be created.

Against all that background, is Valterra Platinum still optimistic about the PGMs?

The answer to that, as has been firmly stated since its Capital Markets Day earlier this year, is “absolutely yes”, amid a 70%-higher PGMs basket price in the year to date and the PGMs basket price being 50% higher since the demerger with Anglo.

“Despite the volatility that you see in prices, and certainly they have their moments, we still fundamentally believe in what we've been saying for the past 12 month – supply is constrained and is likely to continue to decrease, because of the lack of investment by others in the PGMs space in growing their own production.

“Demand, from an automotive perspective, continues to be robust. We continue to see the opportunities in the industrial space, which we will accelerate, and we’ll certainly continue to support PGMs utilisation in cleaner mobility and other industrial applications.”

As a PGM producer with a positive outlook, Valterra Platinum is continuing to look for new markets into which it can invest and which can utilise its products.

The company highlights the utilisation of PGMs in cleaner mobility, in fuel cell electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles and more recently, how PGMs could be used in other in technological applications, including data storage and electronic chips.

It is seeing now how the market is not only shaped by supply and demand, but also by financial flows and sentiment, and right now, the dynamics of that are also pointing to a much tighter market, which could continue to see prices at the current levels and at those levels for a bit longer.

It has spent time as an orgnisation showing the benefits of being an integrated PGM producer, which linked to how PGMs can be taken from mine to market and how beneficiation creates in-country economic activity and economic development.

“Beneficiation for us is not just a compliance. It's certainly a strategic advantage. But we all know that in terms of creating those opportunities in South Africa, we have to continue to work on electricity provision and energy being provided at much lower cost than currently.

“We know that logistics and transportation are critically important, and that crime and corruption remain one of the fundamental barriers to creating a much more sustained economic climate for us.

“Therefore, together with others in the industry, we’ll continue to play our role in helping support these important initiatives in South Africa.

“A few days ago, South Africa very successfully hosted the G20 and also the B20, and Valterra Platinum played a role in the B20 is one of the platinum sponsors. We participated, and some of you joined us at that side event last Friday.

“Hopefully we demonstrated in partnership with Toyota, Sasol, Air Products, Bambili Energy and with Bosch, that you can have a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle here on the South African roads, transporting people around Sandton, who participated in the B20, and the importance of that was in demonstrating and showcasing the proof of concept,” said Miller, who is now personally driving a Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) domestically and he and other attendees are being driven exclusively in Hyundai NEXO vehicles, which are also FCEVs, at the Hydrogen Council summit currently underway in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, where FCEV buses provide real-world demonstration of hydrogen mobility.

Straight after outlined his vision to South Africa’s journalists, Mining Weekly can report that Miller headed directly to Seoul, where he joined more than 200 CEOs and senior executives at the Hydrogen Council’s Global CEO Summit.

The summit is aligning the action needed to accelerate hydrogen’s deployment and unlock commercial-scale demand for FCEVs by 2030.

Co-hosted by Hyundai Motor group vice chairperson Jaehoon Chang, who co-chairs the Hydrogen Council, the summit was joined by South Korean political leadership as well as key government officials from France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Saudi Arabia, Australia and Indonesia, as well as by representatives from the International Organisation for Standardisation.

In addition, a delegation of Hydrogen Council CEOs participated in the World Hydrogen Expo as well as a top-level pre-meeting with South Korea’s Climate, Energy and Environment Minister Sung-hwan Kim.

Mining Weekly can point out that already, a total of $110-billion is committed for 500-plus projects that have progressed beyond financial investment decision, are in construction or are in operation, which is a ten-fold increase since 2020. Interestingly, the projects under construction are all deploying proven technology by an industry that is ready to scale.

Discussion at the summit is focusing on shaping the next chapter of hydrogen’s build-out through action on demand, regulations, infrastructure and standards.

It is making history as the world's first major international business event that is making use of 100% hydrogen-powered transportation.

Miller and other attendees have been FCEV driven exclusively in Hyundai NEXO vehicles and doing the rounds are hydrogen fuel cell buses. Collectively, these are providing a real-world demonstration of hydrogen mobility.

“We fundamentally believe in that greener engine energy. We fundamentally believe in part of the energy transition, but that energy transition is going to have different forms of technology and FCEVs are part of that, and, therefore, the utilisation of PGMs in the long-term is much more secured,” Miller told South Africa’s journalists.

“Next year, we'll be continuing to build on some of the momentum that we've created, continuing to strengthen our position as a credible, transparent, future-focused organisation, staying disciplined in terms of what we say we're going to do.

“Staying competitive is fundamentally important to us, because we know that the PGMs business is cyclical and therefore remaining competitive is really important in order to ensure our long-term success and staying aligned with these global shifts – and, boy, do they shift often.

“But importantly, we'll continue to deepen the conversations with our policy makers, with our communities and with yourself the media on what the next era of critical mineral development should look like in South Africa.

“Accelerating our market development by supporting those new, emerging PGM applications and by collaborating with our peers globally to unlock new opportunities, remains front and centre of what we do from a market development perspective.

“Most importantly, we’ll strive to continue to be a company that our investors and you, the media, trust, one that then showcases just the enormous contribution that PGMS make to South Africa and to Southern Africa and continuing to deliver on what we say we're going to do,” Miller promised, while looking forward to “an even more exciting year for Valterra Platinum in 2026”.

EUROPEAN UNION ADVANCE

Meanwhile, the publication Driving Hydrogen reported on November 18 that the EU had approved over €600-million in funding to accelerate alternative fuel infrastructure and 38 new hydrogen refuelling stations were expected to benefit.

The funding, granted under the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility, is part of a larger plan to fast-track zero-emission mobility for road, rail, ports and airports.

In total, 42 projects across 26 EU member States will receive support and hydrogen infrastructure is helping to decarbonise heavy-duty transport routes for trucks, buses and cars.

In the view of Matthieu Guesné, founder and CEO of Lhyfe, the decarbonisation of heavy mobility through hydrogen is not an option but a necessity. “While some continue to debate the pros and cons of electric batteries versus hydrogen, or question the maturity and sustainability of the model, we are investing, acting, and making the decarbonisation of freight transport a tangible reality. From now on, the movement can only accelerate.”

The German governing coalition has agreed to build 2 GW of new hydrogen-fired power plants and at least 8 GW of new hydrogen-ready gas-fired power plants, according to the minutes of a coalition committee meeting seen by Hydrogen Insight.

The new power stations would be dispatchable, meaning that they would primarily be used to ensure electricity supply at times when renewables supply is limited by a lack of wind and sunshine.

And the list of hydrogen developments could go on…