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Mitigating climate change, the biggest challenge of our time, requires a new, clean industrial revolution, says H2 Green Steel of Sweden, which on Tuesday announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Anglo American to advance green steelmaking.

The London- and Johannesburg-listed Anglo has also signed MoUs with huge steel producers such as Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG, Salzgitter Flachstahl and Nippon Steel of Japan to collaborate on the development of new pathways for the decarbonisation of steelmaking.

The agreements include trialling the use of premium quality iron-ore products from Anglo’s Kumba Iron Ore mines in South Africa as feedstock for direct reduced iron (DRI) production.

“We are impressed by Anglo’s efforts to bring high-quality iron-ore products to customers which focus on low-carbon iron and steelmaking, and we look forward to continue working with them, not only for our first green hydrogen integrated steel plant in Sweden but for other future locations globally,” H2 Green Steel chief procurement officer Luisa Orre stated in a release to Mining Weekly.

Stockholm-headquartered H2 Green Steel, launched in 2021 to accelerate the decarbonisation of the steel industry by using green hydrogen, is developing an integrated, digitalised, and circular DRI plant in Boden, in northern Sweden, which will produce green steel, reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 95% when compared with traditional steelmaking. The founder and largest shareholder of H2 Green Steel is investment company Vargas.

Interestingly, Anglo was itself a DRI producer in the days when it owned Scaw Metals, east of Johannesburg. Steel production by DRI is a technically proven production method estimated to be significantly less carbon intensive than the traditional blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace integrated steelmaking process. When using green hydrogen as a reducing agent, the process can be made largely CO2-free.

“Collaboration with industry leaders who share a vision for decarbonised steelmaking is central to our commitment to reduce emissions in our value chains. Our work with H2 Green Steel will focus on exploring ways for premium, responsibly produced iron-ore from our operations to be used as feedstock in the Boden plant’s low-carbon production process, paving the way to a cleaner, greener way to produce steel – one of the backbone materials for the rollout of energy transition infrastructure and for ongoing global socio-economic development,” Anglo American marketing business CEO Peter Whitcutt highlighted.

Climate science has set an imperative to decarbonise the global economy as quickly as possible.

Anglo is taking steps to halve its Scope 3 emissions by 2040, building on a pre-existing commitment to reach operational Scope 1 and 2 carbon neutrality by the same year.

Owing to steel production accounting for a large percentage of CO2 emissions, its decarbonisation is seen as a must and giga electrolysis infrastrucutre to produce green hydrogen is envisaged as integrated plant in future steel works.

South Africa’s new trackless mobile machinery (TMM) regulations published five months ago are mining’s new burning issue and an undeclared state of national disaster for some, ENSafrica webinar attendees heard on Monday.

TMM is defined as any self-propelled mobile machine used at a mine for mining, transport or associated operations underground or on surface, which is mobile by virtue of its movement on wheels, skids, tracks, mechanical shoes or any other device fitted to the machine. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Excluded are rail bound equipment, scraper winches, monorail installations, static winches, draglines, winding machinery installations and track-mounted conveyors.

“On Wednesday, 21 December 2022, whilst we were all still doing Christmas shopping, these sub regulations were published for commencement,” ENSafrica mine and occupational health and safety executive Warren Henricks recalled during the webinar covered by Mining Weekly. The 2015 regulations governing trackless machines were uplifted, and the Mine Health and Safety Act Trackless Mobile Machinery Regulations for collision avoidance systems promulgated.

In a nutshell, these require mines to provide for anti-collision systems and devices to automatically retard or stop diesel-powered TMM from colliding with pedestrians and other TMMs.

The regulations commenced on gazetting with no transitional provision amid South African mines reporting 17 TMM-related fatalities last year and 16 the year before.

Immediate compliance created a precarious position for some employers, exacerbated by the degrees of regulatory enforcement from region to region.

In certain regions, employers have been required to submit implementation plans, with employers having to rely on collaborative efforts between multiple and respective original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

In response to a question, Henricks said the onus is on the employer to determine the risk of collisions and to providing the systems to eliminate that risk with no onus on the OEM to provide TMMs with the required technology.

Applications for exception should be made to the Minister in terms of Section 79 of the Mine Health and Safety Act, who is able to delegate such power to the Chief Inspector of Mines in terms of Section 96. Copied on the exemption application should be the Principal Inspector if response is referred to in the exemption application.

“It’s only been five months so far, so it’ll be interesting once decisions are made on exemption applications, and how employers deal with the implementation going forward,” Hendricks added.

Speaking to journalists in this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba in February, Minerals Council South Africa chairperson Zero Harm Forum Japie Fullard said of concerning TMM-related fatalities: “We’re going to do whatever we can to bring those down.”

COVID OBLIGATIONS

ENSafrica mine and occupational health and safety executive consultant Willem le Roux and ENSafrica mine and occupational health and safety executive Celeste Coles dealt with Covid 19 and ongoing compliance requirements of the disease.

Le Roux drew attention to the fact that on February 3 this year, in the same regulation in which monkey pox was declared a notifiable disease, the other notifiable diseases listed did not include Covid 19.

“I don’t think that one can argue that by scrapping the reference to Covid 19 in the latest notification that one can conclude that reporting is no longer required, and, in any event, the Minister can’t just leave out things. The Minister can declare regulations by imposing certain requirements or by changing them or deleting them.

“This hasn’t been followed. Perhaps something unknowingly or unintentionally was done, as we know nowadays happens very often. So, my advice is report Covid. When it is diagnosed by the health care provider, report it straight away by telephone and you will find the telephone number on the website of the National Institute of Communic...

Chemicals company BASF global precious metal services senior VP Timothy Ingle told delegates attending the Platinum Group Metals Day, in Johannesburg, earlier this week, that it would be extremely challenging from a raw material perspective to meet the expected global uptake of ten-million electric vehicles (EVs) this year and the goal of reaching 40-million EVs on the road by 2030.

Ingle pointed to challenges faced globally with securing base metal supply and, in particular, lithium and class one nickel.

He said that, overall, the different nuances present in various countries would dictate EV uptake rates – particularly in developing countries such as South Africa, Brazil or India, where insufficient infrastructure existed to support a wholesale EV transition.

“I would expect that internal combustion engines (ICEs) will continue to be prevalent in countries like these in the future,” he said.

Anecdotally, Ingle shared that Uber drivers in northern Europe were trending towards buying ICE vehicles again, given the extraordinarily high cost of electricity in the region, making it cheaper to refuel a car with petrol or diesel than to recharge it from the grid.

Umicore precious metals management senior VP Bernhard Fuchs agreed with Ingle’s sentiments, adding that, if the ICE era was reaching its end, it was only true for Europe.

“I don't see any other area in the world which is following that thought at all, and Europe is by far not where the most cars are bought. There's certainly a big future still for ICE cars in the world,” Fuchs said.

Volkswagen Group South Africa volume planning manager and product marketing head Gina Handley added that high living standards measure (LSM) groups were now moving increasingly towards solar as an alternative power source. Therefore, to charge an EV at home is expected to be more affordable than relying on the grid for those in that bracket.

“The journey to EVs is going to happen in South Africa, but it’s not happening at the rate we’ve seen in other international markets. We’ve also seen a lot of other international markets introduce quite stringent strategies towards introducing Evs, which in the South Africa context we haven’t done so yet.

“So we'll see EVs coming in but it will definitely be in the higher LSM groups,” Handley said, noting that EVs were not cheap – a problem in a country where affordable motoring was high in demand.

She said Volkswagen expects most households who can afford EVs to buy them as second cars used for short-range day-to-day commuting, while a regular ICE vehicle will be used for longer trips.

“For original-equipment manufacturers, it is very tough right now. They have to keep investing money for where ICE is right now and they have to also invest massively into battery EVs,” Fuchs added.

A processing pathway away from high-energy pyrometallurgical smelting to low-energy hydrometallurgical platinum group metals (PGM) recoveries has been further advanced by Australian PGMs pioneer Podium Minerals.

Podium is reporting a breakthrough in platinum recoveries through a smelterless technology at its Park Reef Platinum Group Metals PGM Project in Western Australia.

The Parks Reef PGM deposit hosts platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold, copper, nickel and cobalt. A mining licence has been approved, native title granted, environmental survey completed, and scoping study advanced.

Podium is making significant progress on a low carbon, lower energy intensive total lifecycle of PGMS.

“For us, it's about a low energy, low carbon footprint for PGMs. It's about meeting some of the supply deficits which are forecast and looking to improve the PGM industry overall,” Podium Minerals MD and CEO Sam Rodda told Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

“We're looking at an opportunity to open up a PGM market and the PGM commodity sector in Australia. We're really making strong advances around a technology that allows us to look at a high-grade product which is suitable for some of the major refineries in Europe,” Rodda added.

When Mining Weekly spoke to Podium in November last year, intensive hydrometallurgical testing was under way, which pointed to smelterless technology ultimately producing material suitable for refinery feed.

The ASX-listed development company has since completed 21 leach optimisation tests, which point to an unlocking of further value at laboratory scale., with continued studies being required before a mineral processing performance can be measured that represents the expected performance of a full-scale operation.

Meanwhile, processing under certain atmospheric leach conditions has achieved platinum recoveries of greater than 90%.

Platinum and iridium recoveries are under the spotlight given that these two PGMs are used in proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers to produce green hydrogen, and PEM fuel cells required to generate electricity from hydrogen for mobile and stationary offtake.

Parks Reef has an oxide zone to 45 m and a sulphide zone from 45 m to the base of the resource.

“Since November, after our really strong, heavily informed baseline, we've been able to focus on how we optimise and look to optimise value at our Parks Reef project.

“Our focus has been on how we optimise our metal recoveries through our atmospheric leach test, but also continue to consider how to minimise waste through our processing stream and reduce energy through that processing stream.

“The 21 tests focused on all three of those aspects, but particularly around what are the levers required to increase recoveries of metals such as platinum, but also around iridium and rhodium and some of the base metal products we have within our orebody,” said Rodda.

Parks Reef has an oxide zone to 45 m and a sulphide zone from 45 m to the base of the resource.

Mining Weekly: Iridium is a very scarce PGM that is needed to generate green hydrogen and catalyse hydrogen fuel cell technology. Are there indications of significant improvement when it comes to the recovery of iridium?

Rodda: We're seeing the uptake of a iridium along with platinum as critical ingredients to those PEM electrolysers you speak of. It's absolutely important for us to focus on how to optimise recoveries of iridium. Through these last 21 tests, we've seen strong increases around oxide recovery of iridium, and we've seen and started to understand some of those drivers around increasing Iridium recovery in our sulphide. We continue to look to extract as much metal as we can out of our orebody, iridium in particular.

Smelterless technology is very appealing in a South Africa short of electricity, but what has motivated Podium’s focus on hydrometallurgical processing in Western Australia, which has none of South Africa’s power constrain...

Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer says if marketed in a collaborative fashion, PGMs have the potential to create a million jobs in the country and add R8-trillion to the economy. He discusses twelve South African universities researching critical metals to combat climate change, as well as hydrogen's economic potential for Australia.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy is engaged in an intensive programme of mineral exploration, particularly in the North West, Limpopo and the Northern Cape provinces, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said, speaking at the North West Mining and Energy and Investment Conference on March 30.

He indicated that this follows the inaugural North West Mining and Energy Investment Conference held in January 2022, which resolved on the gazetting of the exploration strategy for the mining industry in South Africa; and the progress made following the gazetting of the strategy and its implementation plan in April 2022.

“We are doing this because we are convinced that this is the new mining belt for our country where new mines can be opened on the back of the discovery of new minerals that have been proven to be critical for a just energy transition,” Mantashe highlighted.

He noted that, during the 2023 Investing in African Mining Indaba, the department announced the formation of the R500-million exploration fund by the Council for Geoscience (CGS) in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to enable junior mining and the emergence of new mines.

“This is deliberately intended to redress the past imbalances wherein the majority of South Africans were systematically marginalised and prevented from owning the means of production, and from meaningful participation in the mainstream economy.

“As we brace ourselves to grow and transform the mining and energy sector, we must be conscious that this will not be an easy task. However, we must ensure that we are not detracted and derailed from growing a globally competitive and transformed mineral and energy sectors,” Mantashe emphasised.

He informed that, on March 24, the department issued a request for bids for a customised mining license system aimed at enhancing efficiency and transparency in the application, granting and management of prospecting and mining rights.

“We believe the system will help us improve the accuracy and accessibility of the significant information needed by the industry to flourish. Moreover, the system is expected to assist in expediting the processing of applications and thus support the efforts by the Department to address the backlog in prospecting and mining applications,” he outlined.

Mantashe also mentioned some improvements with regard to the implementation of the country’s Energy Action Plan, including the reforms made to embedded generation where the licensing threshold has been removed.

“We are pleased that mining companies are increasingly leveraging on these reforms. Following Gold Fields’ success in the construction of a solar plant to boost its energy reliability, Seriti Resources is constructing a wind project in Mpumalanga, and Exxaro is constructing a solar plant to supply electricity to their Grootegeluk mine.

“Through these reforms, government has enabled policy and regulatory certainty, therefore, it is incumbent on individual companies to leverage on them. We hope to see more and more registrations in this regard,” he averred.

According to Mantashe, the country should also move away from protests against the development of alternative industries to power the economy, such as the upstream petroleum industry.

A consortium across a dozen South African universities has the spotlight on critical metals for a low-carbon future.

At a time when the mining world has its spotlight focused firmly on the availability of critical metals to arrest global temperature increases, South Africa’s Centre of Excellence for Integrated Minerals and Energy Resource Analysis (Cimera) is supporting something like 70 research projects a year across the universities.

How to find more of certain commodities, understanding where the metals came from, grasping the geometallurgy of getting the metals out of commodities, and tackling the value chain from extraction to processing are focus areas of students, who are given the opportunity to do an MSc or PhD or a postdoctoral research fellowship.

“We're upskilling the population of geologists who will meet the needs of the future, particularly understanding the fourth industrial revolution and the handling of big data,” says Professor Judith Kinnaird, the visiting professor of the School of Geosciences, and the Co-Director of Cimera at the University of the Witwatersrand, who spoke to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview. (Also swatch attached Creamer Media video.)

“We’re a consortium across 12 universities. Cimera is jointly run by myself at Wits but the major centre is run by my colleague, Professor Nikki Wagner, out of the University of Johannesburg."

Memoranda of understanding have been signed with South Africa’s Council for Geoscience and various industries and further partners are actively being sought and welcomed.

In addition to highlighting the necessity of more mining to meet the needs of a future low-carbon economy, Cimera is also strongly emphasising the need of the world to recycle more and to design products that for reuse to help ensure a sustainable future.

Mining Weekly: We hear a lot these days about critical metals for a low carbon economy – but what is meant by critical metals?

Kinnaird: Critical metals are simply those metals that are critical to the economy of any particular country. If you're making something like cars, the metals that are critical to your economy might be different from another country whose main output is computers. But what makes a metal critical are several factors, one being the actual availability of supply. For instance, 90% of all platinum group elements come from South Africa, which produces just over 70%, Russia at 12% and Zimbabwe at 7%, so 90% of our platinum group elements come from three countries. The other factor that makes something critical is the political stability of the country. Another factor that makes something critical is if it's mined as a minor commodity of something like zinc, for instance. If we wanted gallium, if we stopped mining zinc, where's that gallium going to come from? Other factors, such as the grade of the metal and the difficulty of processing, all lead towards criticality. We know things have been critical right from early humankind, when we went through the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the coal and steam industrial age and the now recently the petroleum age.

What, in your view, can Africa contribute to what is needed when it comes to critical metals?

Africa can produce quite a lot for the global needs. Africa can contribute platinum group metals from the Bushveld Complex, but for batteries, we can produce lithium from Zimbabwe from Namibia and, going into the future, we’ll be producing lithium from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali. Cobalt is a very important material and 70% of the world's supply comes from DRC but here we have the perception that there's child labour involved and that obviously causes issues. We produce vanadium from the Bushveld Complex from the rocks above where the platinum group elements are. We can produce nickel and graphite so we can make a major contribution to the economy in going into the future for a low carbon society.

It seems that lithium and rare earths are highly critical...

Mining companies need to approach environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles on a truth and reconciliation footing and be honest about where they are on a scale of one to 10, says Rifle-Shot Performance business development director Dilley Naidoo.

Naidoo, who spoke to Mining Weekly on Zoom, advocates that ESG be a living, breathing, day-to-day reality in mining comanies, which need to be conscious of what has gone on before, where the industry is at present, and how it must move into the future. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Naidoo’s view of mining’s history over the last century in South Africa is that it has been largely investor-centred but points to the ESG consciousness of today’s generation as lighting up the new path that has to be taken.

He says that miners need to make ESG part of the social fabric and DNA of the company, and take an holistic transformational aproach that is bolted and costed into the business model.

Right from the exploration stage, companies must, he adds, have definitive exit plans that sustain subsidiary industries, employment and economic activity upon mine closure.

Boardrooms and rockfaces must be integrated to ensure that the ESG message is spread across all operations.

Among the many other points made by Naidoo are that:

Communities must be made part of the value chain.

Continuing use of male hostels must be declared unacceptable from a humanitarian perspective.

Mine tailings must be subjected to predictive monitoring to create awareness well in advance of tailings breaches.

Mining Weekly: Are there the countries that are good models to follow?

Naidoo: There are challenges all over the mining world, but I think the countries I'll probably single out are Australia and Canada in terms of starting to do a better job in the areas of environmental, social and governance as part of the business model.

Collaborative marketing of platinum group metals (PGMs) has the potential to add a million more South African jobs and contribute R8-trillion more to the economy as the world greens and lowers carbon intensity.

The combination of green hydrogen displacing natural gas and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) displacing internal combustion engine vehicles, could result in net carbon dioxide savings of up to 11% of the Paris Agreement’s 2030 targets.

A PGMs growth opportunity for South Africa of between 34% and 51% by 2030 from the current annual base of 4.7-million ounces can be provided by FCEVs and hydrogen electrolysers.

Investments in hydrogen of $300-billion to $1-trillion are expected in the next decade or so as demand increases sevenfold up to 2050, with most of that focused on generating green hydrogen at cost-effective rates from electrolysis.

“There are over 30 countries in the world that already have programmes in place around moving the hydrogen economy and quite a few countries have really put their money where their mouths are. Australia has invested $4-billion in growing the hydrogen economy and they are working with companies on getting green hydrogen down from $6/kg to $1.50/kg, which is where the competitive place is going to be,” outgoing Minerals Council South Africa CEO Roger Baxter told Tuesday’s PGMs Industry Day, covered by Mining Weekly. Baxter is also chairperson of the World Platinum Investment Council.

“The journey is on and when you get this critical mass of people focused on the issues with the brightest and best brains in the world, including from a South African perspective, you will see how this is going to change and shape the game in terms of green hydrogen going forward,” said Baxter, who emphasised South Africa’s pre-eminent position as the overwhelming source of global PGMs.

“Let’s not beat around the bush. Let’s just appreciate that 87% of the world’s known reserves are locally based. If you include Zimbabwe, it takes it up to over 90%,” he said.

The focus of the National Platinum Strategy for South Africa, developed by the Minerals Council, is to add R8-trillion to South Africa’s economy by 2050 and a million additional direct and indirect jobs.

PGMs are already playing a growing role in the global energy transition to net zero, with 30 countries deploying hydrogen strategies to decarbonise their economies.

“This is a sector that has incredible potential, but it needs incredible collaboration to take place between government, the mining industry, organised labour and communities on how we tackle the short-term issues.

“We have made some progress on the electricity front in unlocking private sector investment in electricity, security and rail constraints. Ten per cent of the average basket price of the PGMs mining sector is chrome-related. Only 30% of our chrome is being transported by rail at the moment. The rest is going on road, as an example,” Baxter told the in-person and online event, chaired by mining stalwart Bernard Swanepoel.

“A concerted and coordinated effort between the public and private sector, supported by the framework of the National Platinum Strategy, is needed to fix the short-term issues and then to focus on the long-term issues to realise the promise that PGMs offer.

“I’ve lived my life according to this phrase that comes from President Mandela, Madiba, the father of our nation, who said, ‘a vision without action is just day-dreaming, action without a vision is merely passing time. But a Vision with action can change the world'.

“I really do believe that we can change the world if we work with government collaboratively to take Africa’s PGMs industry forward,” said Baxter.

In 2021, the 277 t of PGMs produced by 172 159 direct employees for R347-billion, represented nearly 40% of the total minerals sold by South Africa.

“This is an industry that really does matter for the economy, with R67-billion worth of wages paid. My estimate is that roughly 500 000 people have job...

JSE-listed engineering and construction company Murray & Roberts (M&R) has announced developments that could result in it regaining control of RUC Cementation Mining Contractors (RUC), its Australian mining subsidiary that was lost to the group when its Australian holding company, MRPL, and Clough entered administration in December.

In a statement to shareholders, it was reported M&R, MRPL and the administrators had, on March 24, entered into a binding Deed of Company Arrangement (DOCA) term sheet that could result in RUC reverting to M&R’s ownership by the end of June.

The DOCA is subject to several conditions precedent, including approval by MRPL creditors and credit approval. The terms remain confidential, but will be made available in the administrators’ report to creditors ahead of a meeting that is expected to be held in mid-May.

“Should the conditions precedent to the DOCA be met, it is expected that the DOCA will be implemented by 30 June 2023,” M&R said in a statement.

“The execution of the DOCA term sheet reflects an important first step in the group’s efforts to regain control of RUC.

“Should the DOCA complete, RUC will be reinstated within the group and the full scale and capability of the group’s multinational mining platform would be re-established.”

The process represented a significant development for M&R, which had previously described its loss of control over RUC as having been a “particularly tragic” consequence of the MRPL administration process.

The loss of RUC meant that the group’s mining platform currently comprised only two regional businesses in Africa and the Americas, which had combined orders worth R14-billion at the end of December.

CEO Henry Laas initially expressed pessimism about M&R’s prospects for regaining control in a bidding process, with the DOCA now representing an alternative to such a process.

He also reported that a startup business had been registered in Australia with the intention of restarting a mining business in that territory should it fail to regain control of RUC.

However, he also stressed that regaining RUC was first prize, as it previously contributed about one-third to its mining platform.

With the loss of Clough, the mining platform formed the core of the downscaled M&R, which had also retained a unit in sub-Saharan Africa, which focused on a power, industrial and water projects.

That platform had an order book of R2-billion at the end of December, arising mainly from renewable energy and transmission projects in South Africa.