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Listed as a 2023 priority by Anglo American is getting the first wave of the renewable energy ecosystem projects under way in South Africa.

The first wave of 680 MW renewable energy projects being undertaken by the London- and Johannesburg-listed Anglo and its partners are at various stages of development. (Also watch Creamer Media’s attached video.)

“Next year, all being well, I’m hoping to show you a couple of pictures of some of these projects in construction,” Anglo CEO Duncan Wanblad said during the company’s sustainability performance report covered by Mining Weekly.

Anglo has agreed commercial terms for two wind sites of 140 MW each, one solar site of 200 MW in the Eastern Cape.

In addition, the diversified mining company has two behind-the-meter operations, both solar, at Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine in the Northern Cape, and at Anglo Platinum’s Mogalakwena platinum group metals mine in Limpopo. Behind the meter refers to anything that happens onsite, on the energy user's side of the meter.

At Sishen, a 70 MW photovoltaic installation is being put in place, with site stabilisation and construction activity predevelopment under way.

The plan is to close financially on the Sishen project in the next quarter or so and to launch full construction by the fourth quarter of this year.

Similarly, the 130 MW behind-the-metre project at Mogalakwena is on the way to financial close, with quarter-four construction also expected .

“Of course, we have a much larger portfolio of energy projects in the development pipeline, and that’s going to follow this first wave,” Duncan said in reference to the 3 000 MW to 5 000 MW programme over the next decade.

Currently, 52% of the electricity used by Anglo and 25% of its total energy use is renewable.

At the new Quellaveco copper mine contracts in Peru, renewable energy contracts the begin this year will take Anglo to a 100% renewable energy position in South America.

From 2025, renewable energy contracts at steelmaking coal operations will also take Anglo to 100% renewables in Australia.

The company’s renewable energy transition principally addresses Scope 2 emissions, which arise largely from the current Southern African electrical supply and global reliance on diesel in the haulage of product in and around mines.

To transition to green energy in Southern Africa, Anglo has entered into the Envusa Energy partnership with EDF Renewables.

Alongside these renewables projects, Anglo has also brought into production the world’s largest hydrogen-powered haul truck and is partnering First Mode to accelerate the commercialisation of the hydrogen technology.

METHANE ABATEMENT

The second category of Anglo emissions receiving attention is methane from its steelmaking coal operations.

The company, which already captures around 60% of the methane from its steelmaking coal mines, uses that methane to generate electricity for the local region.

A total of 100 MW of energy-making capacity is available for use from this captured methane. Initial concept studies are identifying the best approaches for ventilation air methane or VAM abatement as well methane emissions reduction.

Anglo, with new technology vendors and engineering partners, is set to progress from prefeasibility, where it is now, to feasibility study for the design and construction of an industrial gas management unit at Grosvenor, for Moranbah in Australia. Grosvenor is the underground coal mine operated by Anglo Coal Australia, a subsidiary of Anglo American, near Moranbah in the northern region of the Bowen Basin in Queensland.

This will be the first of its type and it is intended then, based on the success, to rollout a template for further deployment for the rest of Anglo’s underground operations in Australia.

“We have established a pretty big ambition here but note that this ambition is very much dependent on the decarbonisation progress of the steel industry, given that its emissions represent two-thirds of out Scope 3 footprint. So, st...

Addressing climate change is an increasingly urgent challenge for all businesses, says Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad, who on Tuesday presented the London- and Johannesburg-listed mining company’s sustainability performance in the realms of carbon neutrality achievement, thriving community creation, and safe, inclusive and diverse workplace development.

“Our commitment to being part of the solution begins in our own business by meeting our carbon neutrality goals, while recognising that partnerships are vital to deliver our shared endeavour of a low carbon future,” says Wanblad in a release to Mining Weekly, which highlights the urgent need for a cleaner, greener world.

“Everyone needs to play their part, from governments and businesses, to civil society and individuals. It is essential we also support skills and jobs and help catalyse new economic activity because this transition must include all of society – it must be ‘just’. Through our Collaborative Regional Development approach, we act as a development partner to help improve lives by catalysing thriving communities with diversified economies that endure and prosper well beyond our presence,” adds Wanblad.

CARBON NEUTRAL OPERATIONS BY 2040

Anglo, which is striving to be carbon neutral across all operations by 2040, was 21% below the peak levels of its 2019 Scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2022, reflecting the 100% renewable electricity supply across its South America operations, with Australia to follow in 2025. Southern Africa is currently its largest source of Scope 2 emissions, requiring the company to partner with EDF Renewables to develop 3 GW to 5 GW of clean generation capacity over the next decade.

While cutting Scope 3 emissions is largely dependent on the decarbonisation of value chains and the steel industry in particular, it has a target to halve these emissions by 2040 by working with several steelmaking customers to help develop cleaner steelmaking technologies.

It is also cutting carbon emissions in its shipping activities through the introduction of ten dual-fuelled “Ubuntu” shipping fleet over the course of 2023 and 2024, with two capesize vessels already in service and offering up to a 35% emissions reduction compared with conventional fuel.

LOCAL PROCUREMENT AND LIVELIHOODS PROGRAMMES

Anglo’s sustainable mining plan commits the company to supporting three jobs offsite for every job in its operations by 2025, increasing to five offsite jobs by 2030. The focus on local procurement and collaborative regional development (CRD) is playing a major role. Through CRD, the company is making further investments with partners in agriculture, agro-processing, municipal capacity-building, and education, catalysing diversification within local economies and helping to ensure the positive impacts of our operations are felt beyond the life of mine.

By the end of 2022, 115 000 jobs were supported through local procurement and socio-economic development programmes, supporting 1.8 offsite jobs for every onsite job in relevant countries.

SAFE, INCLUSIVE, DIVERSE WORKPLACES

Anglo says it goes beyond physical safety by helping to create an environment of psychological safety.

In South Africa in November, it launched a Living with Dignity hub, which is an independently managed facility that provides victims of gender-based violence, bullying, harassment and victimisation with an independent reporting channel, as well as expert psycho-social and legal support.

In January, Anglo became the first mining company to be awarded the status of being a committed global living wage employer.

The investment into green hydrogen was the biggest investment pledge by far to be announced at the 5th South African Investment Conference in Sandton.

The R105-billion energy investment commitment of Hive Hydrogen knocked the socks off the other top-ten pledges by coming in R45-billion higher that the next highest, which was Vodacom with a pledge of R60-billion into information and communication technology.

Moreover, as President Cyril Ramaphosa informed last week’s 5th South Africa Investment Conference, Hive Hydrogen’s massive investment goes beyond the construction of a green hydrogen/ green ammonia production facility at the Coega Special Economic Zone in the Eastern Cape in that it also embraces the construction of a seawater desalination plant capable of meeting about half of the water needs of the Nelson Mandela Bay metropolitan area, which is water-short.

Hive Hydrogen’s plan is for a combined 3 200 MW of renewable sun and wind energy to electrolyse 3.4 megalitres of seawater a day as part of thehydrogen extraction process. Proton exchange membrane, or PEM, electrolysers, which generally make use of South Africa’s prized platinum and iridium metals, will separate the hydrogen from the oxygen, as the project operates closely with salt-making company Cerebos, which has an adjacent Coega desalination works in need of switching to green hydrogen.

Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille has registered Hive Hydrogen’s green project as a special integrated project (SIP), which means it will be prioritised for implementation while following an expedited path to delivery of 950 000 t of green ammonia a year, with set and shorter time frames for regulatory processes.

Hive Energy and BuiltAfrica – together as Hive Hydrogen – as well as Linde plc, through its wholly owned South African subsidiary Afrox, last year teamed up to establish the pioneering Eastern Cape plant, which is expected to generate 10 000 direct and indirect jobs.

From its outset, BuiltAfrica, headed by former Eskom CEO and former Standard Bank chairperson Thulani Gcabashe – has only worked in renewable energy, and most of the portfolio of Hive Energy, started by Giles Redpath in 2010, has been renewable energy. As renewable energy generators, both businesses have set out to balance the intermittency of renewable energy with the long-storage benefit of hydrogen, a zero-carbon energy carrier.

When the South African opportunity came up, the combined businesses latched on to producing green ammonia for the global market as an initial step.

As Hive Hydrogen South Africa executive chairperson, Gcabashe has described securing SIP status as a huge achievement as interaction with several State-owned enterprises ensues.

Hive Energy has also entered a joint venture with the Transitional Energy Group, to develop the $8-billion Gente Grande green ammonia project in Chile, where Platinum Pulse reports that Anglo American is kicking off a programme aimed at developing a green hydrogen corridor. Anglo is also involved in the proposed building of a green hydrogen corridor from Limpopo through Gauteng to KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Also in South Africa and also announced at the 5th South Africa Investment Conference, Mitochondria Energy founder and CEO Mashudu Ramano pledged an investment of at least R4.3-billion in a hydrogen valley innovation hub, which is described as the culmination of a 15-year journey to create affordable, decentralised and sustainable energy services, which will enable consumers to produce and provide for their own energy needs, facilitated by fuel cell technologies and hydrogen.

Highlighted has been the decision of Mitochondria Energy to locate its manufacturing hub in the Vaal Region, the birthplace of industrialisation in South Africa, which is now poised to be the birthplace of sustainable and net-zero technology development.

Emfuleni Municipality in southern Gauteng has allocated 700 ha of land for the development of the propo...

The lack of public sector transparency and emerging private sector silence from companies opting not to list are combining to limit South Africa’s knowledge of the mining sector, and thus curb its growth prospects, Mining Weekly can today report.

Public sector opacity and private sector delisting without relisting, is leaving a worryingly high number of promising assets in seeming limbo.

Becoming increasingly farcical is the claim sung from legislative hymn sheets that it is the people of South Africa who own this country’s minerals treasure chest.

Such thoughts emerge worryingly as one surfs the new SA Mining Map published by AmaranthCX and 1Map.

In the absence of public sector information of the kind that is commonplace all around the mining world – but not in South Africa – this private sector map throws as much light as possible on this country’s mining and exploration.

As one surfs the map, one becomes increasingly alarmed by:

the awarded mining rights that are being honoured in the breach;

the prospecting rights that are being held on the never-never; and

the total absence of what should be obligatory information from unlisted companies that have acquired listed companies and then not only become silent but in some instances invisible.

When listed, one company published competent persons’ reports that pointed to very promising mining potential, but since being acquired and delisted, what looked like something that would employ thousands of people could well be lying dormant.

Why is it that you can sit at your computer anywhere in the mining world and receive:

information about what mining and prospecting rights are available for investment; and

the deadlines of exploration rights?

After two decades of the promulgation of the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2004, that is still not possible – and those meant to provide it are still not even outlining in detail what form the long-awaited South African management of mining and prospecting rights will take.

Without information, investment cannot be attracted, and without investment, the economy will not grow, and without economic growth, unemployed people will not be employed.

All other mining jurisdictions have understood that for decades and have had systems in place that shine a light on mining investment possibilities and limit official discretion.

In South Africa, it seems to be about excessive official discretion in an atmosphere very difficult to navigate.

With the privately distributed mining map, subscribers have access to two sets of data. The system has icons of different shapes and colours for each shaft and open pit. When mining is turned off, farm boundaries come into view.

Displayed are the very well-known eastern and western limbs of the Bushveld Complex and moving south from show the Central Rand, East Rand, and West Rand goldfields, as well as the Evander goldfields and South Rand goldfields, where Sibanye-Stillwater’s Burnstone gold project comes into view.

Next to that is the Mpumalanga Highveld and all the different coal and prospecting and mining rights.

If one zooms further in, it shows the mines, which are accessible on Google maps.

The map has a street map underlay, which shows the underlying land use.

“Some of the things that I came across while researching a lot of this map was information that I’d collected over decades, either in the back of my mind, or in informal databases and things,” says AmaranthCX founder and director Paul Miller.

Turning back on the icons, reveals the now-closed Transvaal Navigation Colliery property. Zooming in far enough enables one to see dumps.

The mining areas have geological underlays, plus aerial photographs. Zooming in more brings Eskom’s Kendal power station into view.

To identify a farm portion that might be perceived to host interesting geology, a click on area reveals the erf number or farm portion number for further research.

This is all completely normal government service in any country...

Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer discusses the new online South African Mining Map that was recently revealed; Copper 360's listing on the JSE; and Glencore’s advancement on the road to the circular economy.

South Africa could have 21 new mining listings if foreign mining companies that already operate in this country would also list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in Africa, but one that is shrinking.

The 21 companies are all listed elsewhere, with no listing in South Africa, even though they are mining, developing or exploring in South Africa.

If all 21 listed, there would be a 50% increase in the number of listed mining companies on the JSE, AmaranthCX founder and director Paul Miller calculates in a note to Mining Weekly.

Miller contends that a prompt from South Africa’s Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe would do the trick.

“The JSE has bent over backwards to make inward dual listings quick, easy and cheap. All we need is a trigger, and moral suasion by the Minister asking the CEO of each of the 21 companies to do so, would be a good place to start,” says Miller, a person of considerable mining finance experience with Nedbank and also operational mining exposure as MD of Keaton Energy.

Foreign listed mining companies that are producing in South Africa but are not secondarily listed on the JSE, include New York-listed Tronox Limited and Sydney-listed Terracom Limited.

Tronox’s Namakwa Sands operations are located in the Western Cape, where its ilmenite, natural rutile, and zircon are transported to the Namakwa Sands Saldanha Bay smelter by rail from an opencast mine and concentration plant in Brand-se-Baai. The ilmenite is processed in furnaces to produce saleable titanium dioxide slag and pig iron, while the zircon and natural rutile are stored on-site for export. Final products are dispatched globally to either Tronox’s pigment operations or third-party customers through the Port of Saldanha.

TerraCom, through its wholly owned Universal Coal, has six thermal coal assets and one coking coal asset in South Africa, and exports through Richards Bay Coal Terminal and Maputo.

Also producing in South Africa but not listed here are diamond mining companies Petra Diamonds, Diamcor and BlueRock Diamonds.

London-listed Petra operates the Cullinan and Finsch diamond mines and has the Koffiefontein diamond mine on care and maintenance. Canada-listed Diamcor has the Krone-Endora diamond mine in Limpopo province, and London Aim-listed BlueRock Diamonds mines diamonds at Kareevlei in the Northern Cape, northwest of Kimberley.

Other producers are Sylvania Platinum, Jupiter Mines, Bushveld Minerals, Mineral Commodities, Kropz, and Bisichi.

London Aim-listed Sylvania has six chrome beneficiation and platinum group metal (PGM) processing plants, located on both the eastern and western limbs of the Bushveld Igneous Complex as well as various mineral asset development projects on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex located in South Africa, for which it has approved mining rights.

Sydney-listed Jupiter Mines’ Tshipi é Ntle operates the Tshipi Borwa opencast manganese mine in the Kalahari manganese field of the Northern Cape.

London Aim-listed Bushveld Minerals is a vertically integrated primary vanadium producer with the Vametco mine, Brits Resource and Mokopane Project and Bushveld Energy, with vanadium redox flow battery technology.

Sydney-listed Mineral Commodities has the Tormin mineral sands operation on the West Coast of South Africa and the Xolobeni mineral sands project in the Eastern Cape.

London Aim-listed Kropz has the Elandsfontein phosphate project in the Western Cape and London-listed Bisichi has the Black Wattle coal mining and coal washing operation in Middelburg, Mpumalanga.

Explorers listed in foreign countries but not on the JSE are Ivanhoe Mines, Marula Mining and Botswana Diamonds, along with Taung Gold International, Vanadium Resources, Theta Gold, West Wits Mining, ZEB Nickel Corp, URA Holdings, and Platinum Group Metals.

“It has been my view for some time that the delistings versus listings crisis on SA public markets needs a far more thorough analysis than ‘it is al...

AmaranthCX and its technology partner 1Map have collaborated to publish a comprehensive, online South African Mining Map, with electronic, all commodity depiction.

Other mining jurisdictions, including neighbouring African States, provide this information to attract valuable mining investment – but not so South Africa, which is still taking steps to procure a cadastre.

AmaranthCX founder and director Paul Miller displayed South Africa’s sizeable remaining mining opportunities – plus the huge opportunity loss suffered by this country – in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video, in which Miller displays his layered map and reveals mining opportunities second to none.)

His map goes a long way towards filling the hugely unfortunate information vacuum that has been in place since the introduction of South Africa’s mining and prospecting rights legislative framework in 2004.

The denial of transparency has cut off vitally needed economic growth and jobs – and cries out for immediate reform.

“We don't nearly have enough publicly available information. We live in a constitutional state that requires transparency from our government, but we get the exact opposite,” said Miller, who has painstakingly had to determine who has what, where, for what commodity and for how long.

The map shows farms underlaying prospecting rights or mining rights, and all the basic functionality that one would expect in a competently regulated mining jurisdiction to be provided free through a portal by the State itself.

“We don't have that. So we've come up with the best solution we can. It has a lot of prospecting rights, a lot of mining rights, and by no means do we guarantee that it's complete because we were dependent on obscure sources of data, but we think it's the best we can do under the circumstances,” said Miller.

Mining Weekly: Looking at the map points to South Africa suffering a huge opportunity loss. Just how substantial is this loss?

Miller: It's dramatic. No self-respecting mining jurisdiction that is serious about attracting mining capital fails to make information available to potential investors. We have to go and find where mining companies have done specialist studies as part of their environmental impact assessments, or environmental impact assessments, for fossils, and for historical relics. We have to get those reports and back solve from that where these mining rights are. It's bizarre that that is how we have to find this information.

If the use-it-or-lose-it principle applies, why are so many rights lying dormant?

It’s certainly not use-it-or-lose-it, and the reason appears to be that if you've got a prospecting right that’s coming up for expiry after five years, and you put in your renewal application, it just sits at the department. The way the regulations are specified is that if you have applied for renewal, you can continue to prospect. When you eventually get your renewal, it might be for a limited three-year period. There are prospecting rights held for an excess of 18 years when the legal maximum is eight, so explain that to me. Without any public information being made available, nobody can check up on these things. It’s the oldest trick in the book – you have a prospecting right, you know you have to renew it, you submit your renewal application, and you know full well that you'll get no attention from the department, because they’ve got such a major backlog. Unless you push for renewal, it won't happen and then you can continue prospecting on the never-never.

Our economy has been largely built on mining, and what I see here is that development in mining is absolutely been stifled. Even though there are many possibilities, they're not being pursued.

One of the reasons we've made this available for journalists like yourself is in the hope that you will actually have a look at the map, see things and be reminded. For example, we have the mega mine gold prospecting right that was being...

Glencore has taken another step on the road to achieving the world’s circular economy imperative.

The London- and Johannesburg-listed diversified mining and marketing company, headed by CEO Gary Nagle, intends to provide lithium-ion battery recycling solutions at scale for Spain and Portugal, in partnership with FCC Ámbito and Iberdrola.

FCC Ámbito manages industrial and commercial waste in Spain and Portugal, and Iberdrola is a globally spread renewable energy group that aims to facilitate access to the technologies of the future with a focus on sustainability through its Perseo Venture Builder programme.

The aim of the partnership is to recycle lithium-ion batteries through the establishment of a purpose-built recycling facility, which will include second-life repurposing and end-of-life recycling solutions.

Already a producer, recycler and marketer of battery metals, Glencore has a strategic goal of accelerating circularity of critical minerals needed for the transition to a low carbon economy.

Battery recycling capabilities and feed availability in the region have already been accessed in collaboration with the Iberian Energy Storage Research Centre, or CIIAE.

Work towards identifying the location of the recycling facility, which will be supported by sector-leading technology, is under way.

The recycling facility will be operated by FCC Ámbito, which will pre-process lithium-ion batteries and battery scrap, and separate this feed into distinct streams for further downstream refining and recovery of battery metals.

The volume of recycled battery materials, including production scrap, is expected to reach 35 000 t/y in Spain by 2035.

Glencore has been operating one of the world’s largest zinc smelters in Spain since 1960.

“We view production scrap as well as post-consumer materials as a valuable resource that will help supply the increasing demand for critical metals in support of the energy transition and the world’s net-zero ambition,” Glencore global recycling head Kunal Sinha stated in a release to Mining Weekly.

“This is one step forward in our efforts to recover the resources contained in the waste and to minimise the dependence on raw materials,” said FCC Ámbito circular economy head María J Kaifer.

Iberdrola’s Perseo Venture Builder global head Álvaro Portellano added: “We regard this new cooperation as a valuable opportunity to continue closing the loop in the circularity of the energy transition we are helping to shape, while expanding our successful collaboration with FCC that is already addressing wind blade recycling.”

Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer unpacks the H2 Green Steel/Anglo American memorandum of understanding; the ENSafrica webinar, which heard that new trackless mobile machinery regulations published five months ago are one of mining’s burning issues; and Australian advancements in smelterless low-energy platinum processing.

Coal ash, acid mine drainage and other mine waste – materials substantially available in South Africa – are being spotlighted as potential sources of rare earth elements, critical raw materials that are vital for many clean technologies being implemented globally.

As reported by Mining Weekly last year, the information derived from a study published on the mineralogy and distribution of rare-earth elements in the high-ash coals of South Africa’s Waterberg coalfield could assist with a new concept of logging coal seams.

This logging takes into account the rare earth elemental composition of coal, rather than only thermal coal’s energy characteristics related to the use of it in power generation.

This potentially far-reaching study was conducted by the Clean Coal Technology research group at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, as part of the Department of Science and Innovation- and National Research Foundation-funded South African Research Chairs Initiative.

Owing to a rapid depletion of traditional rare earths ore deposits, governments and the research communities the world over are investigating alternative or non-traditional sources of the minerals.

This was brought home this week by the news that the US Department of Energy, through the Inflation Reduction Act, is making $16-million available to the University of North Dakota and West Virginia University to complete design studies on refineries that will extract and separate rare earth elements and other critical minerals from coal ash, acid mine drainage, and other mine waste.

Rare earths needed for high-demand products like batteries and solar panels make up a group of 17 elements bearing exotic names and the variety of solid waste by-products that contain rare earth elements are now being highlighted globally.

Demand for rare earth elements is predicted to increase sixfold by 2040 according to a Harvard Review report, which Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering associate professor Samson Bada emphasised in the Mining Weekly report of last year.

Although the focus of the Wits research group was on Waterberg coal samples, coal remnants in South Africa’s Mpumalanga coal province has the potential to add considerable volume to any positive developmental outcomes.

Analysis revealed that the total rare earths content in the coal discard and run-of-mine Waterberg coal was above 225 parts per million (ppm), well above the cut-off grade of 130 ppm for extracting REEs in coal.

Heavy rare earths were more enriched in the run-of-mine sample and light rare earths were more dominant in the high-ash, high mineral-content discard coal sample. In addition, the coal discard from the tailings dump provides what was described as an economically viable secondary rare earths resource as it requires no mining.

Meanwhile, the advancement of new technologies, such as liquid membrane separation, molecular recognition technology and supercritical carbon-dioxide extraction, have been investigated to a degree of success and could play a role in extracting rare earths from coal and coal by-products in the future, was highlighted by both Bada and Wits School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering graduate student Hamza Harrar.

As the gap between global demand and supply increases, the search for alternative resources rare earths becomes increasingly important and the opportunity for South Africa to play a role in rare earths extraction elevated.

Reuters reported this week that Sweden, South Africa and Australia are at the forefront of a push to transform piles of mine waste and by-products into rare earths vital for the green energy revolution.

Prices of the minerals used in products from electric cars to wind turbines have been strong, and a rush to meet net-zero carbon targets is expected to further boost demand, the news agency stated.

Australia's RMIT University estimates there are 16.2-million tonnes of unexploited rare earths in 325 mineral sands deposits ...