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: Uranium production in Southern Africa is firming up at a time when the global demand outlook is starting to rise.

Creamer: We don't often talk about uranium in Southern Africa, not even in South Africa, although we have got it as a by-product from the gold mining companies and in Southern Africa, Namibia is pretty big in uranium. We are doing so, because it looks like the demand for uranium is just going to rocket. People are trying to get to energy and nuclear energy is attainable through uranium processing. We look at just a country like the United States, it only produces 1% of its uranium needs, but it looks like it is going to treble its nuclear energy. If that happens everyone is going to be able to firm up on exports. There is not a big exchange, really, for selling of uranium. It is not like other metals and minerals that have these exchanges, but there are many countries that mine uranium and most of the countries are on the eastern limb, you got Kazakhstan, and you got Uzbekistan, and countries like Russia that are producers of this. So, I think it is going to put Southern Africa in a very good position, particularly Namibia, which has got several of these uranium mines and you can see that they are firming up, and uplifting production.

Kamwendo: More copper is being uncovered in South Africa’s Northern Cape, which is very good news.

Creamer: It is very good news indeed, because copper is also going to be in tremendous demand. It is one of these critical metals and as the world electrifies, and it is really electrifying at the moment, they will need a lot more copper. All around the world people are sort of delving as to where they can get copper. We are doing it as well in South Africa and it is great that Orion Minerals, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and of course, in Australia, has been doing a lot of exploration work. They came up this week and said that the latest drilling has indicated some very good results with copper in the Northern Cape in the Okiep area and it is Flat Mine East they are talking about. But, every time they do drilling there, they are finding that it is successful. So, hopefully there will be more drilling. We see Copper360 also looking more intensely at Rietberg in the Northern Cape as well, but one wonders just how much we are not finding, because these finds are all around old mines. They are relooking at old mines  and of course, Orion is also planning to reopen the Prieska mine and they have got all the permits ready for that. But I'm sure if we had our cadastre going, we'd have more exploration there, which would be very good for our country.

Kamwendo: Mining company Cementation Africa is streaking ahead under new ownership.

Creamer: Yes, this is fantastic, because, Cementation group was part of Murray & Roberts. Murray & Roberts is in business rescue and there were many fears that this particular skill of what they have got, they are underground miners exclusively and they do contract mining, which is what a lot of companies want. They want a contract miner to come in and do the work and when the business rescue arose, people feared that this might be the end of Cementation Africa, but an investor has gone in and transitioned them out of the Murray & Roberts situation and already they are re-opening more strongly in Zambia, in Ghana. they have got a big underground contract, with Tharisa Platinum group metals and chrome mine in South Africa. So it's looking strong for them.

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