SAfm’s radio anchor Jon Gericke speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Gericke: The mining investment conference held in South Africa’s well-endowed Northern Cape has firmed up investment.

Creamer: We call the Northern Cape a well-endowed province. That means it has got good potential for mining and it should be explored in greater detail. What has happened now, in Kimberley this week, they had an Investment and Jobs Conference. What was committed was over R100-billion and that was mainly in mining, mainly in exploration, but also in factors that are linked to mining. There are so many of these, even extending down to food and attempts to actually link up now, so that when things happen, they can also benefit.

So, we are looking at a place that could be like Western Australia was decades ago. It has got those endowed mineral riches and they haven't got to them yet. Fortunately, there was some early exploration there, three decades ago. Some people are following that. But what is needed is new, fresh investment in good exploration. We need what we call the cadastre and that is where the State is holding us up. The cadastre gives you a list of exploration opportunities and the country has lagged so badly in this, perhaps it will be shaken up with people saying, look, we are ready to invest, we are ready to explore, so get this cadastre moving so we know where we can start drilling.

Gericke: Valuable exploration workshops are being held in South Africa by the mining major BHP.

Creamer: BHP is a massive company. They were big in South Africa. We had Gencor, then they bought that and it became BHP Billiton and then they dropped the Billiton and now it is once again just BHP. It is heavily concentrated, of course, in Australian terms, in Australia, but they then withdrew from South Africa as BHP and the assets that they had here went into South32, which was listed in Joburg, and they sort of distanced themselves from South Africa. But all of a sudden they’re swinging back. It is again related to this new world that we in and the fact that so many countries are wanting to get involved in mining. You need to know where you can explore, where you can get more metals and minerals.

They formed a little section of their company called Xplor and the whole focus of this is to go around the world. They picked on Africa and they have settled for early workshops here in Johannesburg, which is great for us, because we also need to look at exploration in greater detail and they are doing it with modern technology. So, these workshops will show what new intelligence is available, what you can do to find out exactly what is there and probably end up going to much greater depth. These will also then extend to Namibia and Angola. They are looking at the whole of Africa, but it is good that they are starting here.

They have also linked up with Orion Minerals, which is also listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Orion is busy wanting to resurrect some mining in the Northern Cape, in old places that have been abandoned and now are being renewed. So together, I think it’s going to be good for South Africa and very good for the Northern Cape.

Gericke: Laxity A green hydrogen breakthrough in Namibia is opening the way for decarbonised steelmaking.

Creamer: A green hydrogen breakthrough in Namibia is opening the way for decarbonised steel making. Now, that decarbonised steel is called green steel. At one stage, green steel research and development was all over the place that they were going to do green steel in a big way. Big mining companies were involved to ensure that steelmaking was green because to protect the climate.

Then all of a sudden this climate protection fell back a bit, but because of the trouble in the Middle East now, everything is going back to how it was before and fortunately, there has been a lot of research being done in Namibia. So, interestingly, Namibia is using Australian iron-ore. Why they did that is because the Australian iron-ore is of particularly low grade whereas South Africa’s Kumba Iron Ore is high grade and they want to be able to make green steel out of low grade material as well, with the help of green hydrogen.. They have had a tremendous breakthrough there.

They are so happy and are now going to do further investigations in Germany, because Germany is the other country involved with Australia and Namibia. Hopefully, South Africa’s Saldanha could also pick up on this, because South Africa is also looking to go the green steel route at Saldanha, using our Kumba iron ore and other iron-ore from South Africa. So, the whole world, again, is focused on going green and it is all around this Middle East problem and the need to move away from traditional fuels. Use your sun, wind, water because it helps you to get energy domestically with less risk and cost and not from areas where troubles cause supply insecurity and fuel prices to rise.

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