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Geothermal lithium is probably the greenest lithium in the world, says Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman, who told this year’s DigiMine event at his University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) alma mater that his company is looking to potentially extract geothermal lithium.

“It comes from quite deep in the earth’s crust and we are seriously looking at companies that have the technologies in that space where they are running geothermal plants and they are actually putting the lithium back underground.

“We’re looking at how we can extract that and that would be the greenest lithium in the world,” said Froneman in response to a question at the Wits Sibanye-Stillwater Digital Mining Laboratory event moderated by Professor Fred Cawood and covered by Mining Weekly.

Lithium is currently derived mostly from hard rock mines, or from brine deposits below the surface of dry lake beds.

But the environmental impact of these means of extraction are seen as being quite steep, which is why the extraction of lithium from geothermal waters has received considerable attention, with several companies reportedly exploring that option in regions known for high-lithium content in geothermal waters.

The method is seen as having a small environmental footprint compared with conventional methods.

Earlier this month, Sibanye-Stillwater became Finnish lithium mining company Keliber Oy’s largest shareholder, with a 27% stake.

Keliber has lithium deposits in Finland, which are among the most significant lithium-bearing areas in Europe.

The Finnish company is scheduled to start production in 2024 at a rate of about 15 000 t of battery-grade lithium hydroxide a year from lithium mines and a concentrator plant in Kaustinen, Kokkola and Kruunupyy, as well as a lithium hydroxide plant in Kokkola.

Johannesburg- and New York-listed Sibanye-Stillwater is also investing $490-million in a lithium/boron mining project in Nevada, US, in joint venture (JV) with Australia-listed ioneer.

The JV will develop the Rhyolite Ridge project, which is expected to produce an average of 20 600 t of lithium carbonate a year, converting in the fourth year of operation to 22 000 t/y of battery-grade lithium hydroxide and 174 000 t/y of boric acid over a 26-year mine life.

The all-in sustaining cost for the project is $2 510/t, placing it in the bottom of the global cost curve. An offtake agreement to supply lithium carbonate to a unit of South Korean battery maker Ecopro has been signed by ioneer.

With mining now ramping up, the new Mokala manganese mine in the Northern Cape anticipates being at steady state production by the third quarter of 2021.

Once that happens, the mine expects to be producing more than one-million tonnes of manganese ore a year, with an opencast life-of-mine of more than ten years. Beyond its opencast activities, additional resources are available underground.

Importantly, the mine intends to establish a solar-powered, renewable energy supply in the near term that will decrease its carbon footprint.

The mine is 51% owned by Ntsimbintle Holdings Pty, a broad-based black economic empowerment company led by businessman Saki Macozoma, and 49% by Glencore plc, through its wholly-owned subsidiaries. While Ntsimbintle contributed the exploration and mining rights, Glencore is the project’s technical partner.

Mokala is the second mining project that Ntsimbintle has brought into production in the last ten years, after Tshipi é Ntle Manganese Mine, also located in the Northern Cape.

Site establishment began at Mokala in May 2020, amid the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Excavation and construction activities at the mine quickly gained momentum while stringent Covid prevention methods ensured high safety standards,

Manganese ore was accessed just five months after blasting operations began and ore was extracted for the first time on March 19.

An official launch marking this milestone was held on March 29, and the mine’s first shipment of ore took place in May.

Situated about 4 km northwest of the aptly named Hotazel, Mokala is accessed by a main road, the R380, which connects the town of Kuruman to Blackrock and beyond.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

To develop the mineral resources held on the Mokala property, infrastructural and environmental challenges in recent months needed to be addressed.

The first was the rerouting of the R380 tar road, which originally ran through Mokala’s property. The second, was the redirecting of the Gamagara river, which also runs through Mokala. Rerouting the river was both important and complex.

“The river was a major concern and receiving permission from the relevant authorities that we could redirect it was an important achievement that has extended the life-of-mine,” Mokala CEO Vhonani Mufamadi stated in a release to Mining Weekly. Both of these tasks were undertaken in full compliance with relevant rules and regulations and are now close to completion, the release stated.

Mufamadi described the shareholding structure as being “truly one of the best”. Evidence of this, he said, lay in the efficiency with which Mokala had been brought into production, as well as its success so far and promise of ongoing success.

“The relationship between the two shareholders has been extremely well managed, including the conversion of exploration rights into mining rights,” said Mufamadi.

Glencore, as one of the world’s largest globally-diversified natural resource companies, is a major producer and marketer of more than 90 commodities. Ntsimbintle, which has become a force in manganese mining, is 100% black owned and managed, and comprises entrepreneurial businesses and community broad-based organisations.

“The joint venture between Ntsimbintle and Glencore will provide additional exposure to international manganese markets and increase exports. This, of course, has benefits for the South African economy at large,” Mufamadi added.

EMPLOYMENT AND PROCUREMENT

The policy of the operation is to employ and procure as much as possible locally. Of the mine’s 357 employees and contractors, the majority are sourced from immediate communities.

The vision is to create a culture where employees feel a sense of belonging: “We want our employees to know that their inputs are valued and that they are appreciated as individuals,” said Mufamadi.

Mokala’s long-term vision is to be among South Africa’s safest and cheapest manganese producers. “At peak, we are going to be a significant player in the Kalahari basin and ...

Platinum group metals (PGMs) producer Sedibelo Platinum Mines is well on its way to becoming the lowest of low-energy PGM energy users and the highest of high on-site beneficiators of metals that are key in the global fight against climate change.

Sedibelo’s technology sensation is the remarkable Kell processing plant, now under construction at Pilanesberg Platinum Mines, in the North West province. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Kell, which requires a mere 18% of the energy of conventional PGMs smelting, will eliminate associated carbon emissions, improve recoveries, lower operating costs, eliminate sulphur dioxide emissions – and, outstandingly, take PGMs all the way to the final end consumer on the very same site where the mining takes place. Kell uses standard, off-the-shelf PGMs refining technology used in PGM refineries.

“We now control the entire chain,” said Pallinghurst managing partner and cofounder Arne Frandsen in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly.

Kell’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from concentrate to final refined metals are only 19% of the CO2 emissions given off by conventional smelting and refining.

What is more, steps are being taken to make the 18% of electricity that is used as green as can be.

There is no half measure with Frandsen when it comes to greenness, a hue that he is also flying sky-high as chairperson of Nouveau Monde Graphite of Quebec in Canada. Nouveau Monde, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange in May, is on schedule and below budget with its project to bring graphite anodes to the new battery electric world.

Being maximised at Sedibelo concurrently is on-site value-addition, another massively sought-after but often evasive beneficial aspect of South African mining: “Beneficiation is the big issue because for hundreds of years, people have come to Africa to take the resources and basically add the value to them back home, somewhere else. Value adding was kept to a minimum.

“What we are changing now is that we can actually take everything up out of the ground in Pilanesberg, and we can deliver the final product to the end consumer,” Frandsen, who is the chairperson of Sedibelo Platinum Mines Limited, reiterated.

Sedibelo shares an interest in Kell South Africa with the State-owned Industrial Development Corporation and founder Keith Liddell, the developer of the revolutionary Kell technology, which comes at a third of the capital cost of smelting/refining, and at half of its operating cost.

End products will be customised by Sedibelo’s Kell plant, which will be producing refined 99.95% PGM metal products.

Kell lowers locked-up ‘work in progress’ inventory by 90%, and in doing so releases working capital and shortens payment pipelines from several months for smelters down to a month or so for what will be the case for Sedibelo.

In fact, for a mining company that is currently selling concentrate, the release of locked-up working capital can pay for more than half of a Kell plant and by producing refined metals on-site, Kell generates more skilled jobs.

The first ounces from the Triple Crown project are expected in 2023, with the predominantly shallow deposits enabling safe and sustainable mining activities for potentially more than 60 years.

The existing Pilanesberg Platinum Mines’ concentrator plant has the capacity to be used to process the Triple Crown ore as well as ore from the openpits. With minimal reconfiguration, the Triple Crown upper group two and Merensky ore will be blended and processed through the existing Merensky plant, thereby reducing capital expenditure as well as lowering operating cost significantly.

BATTERY-GRADE GRAPHITE

Mining Weekly can report that the Phase 1 graphite beneficiation plant construction, which coincided with Nouveau Monde Graphite’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange, will begin producing “shaped, purified and coated” battery-grade graphite in Quebec early next year.

It is key that the graphite particles are correctly shaped...

The operational stability and improved production performance achieved by Aim-listed Bushveld Minerals in the last two months of the interim period ended June 30 were carried through into the first two months of the second half of the current financial year, which bodes well for reducing unit costs in the remainder of the year, CEO Fortune Mojapelo says.

“We are confident of maintaining this rhythm, putting us on course to meet our production and cost guidance for the full year,” he notes.

For the six months ended June 30, the group earned revenue of $47-million, a 9% increase year-on-year, supported by an improved average realised price of $29.24/kg of vanadium, partly offset by lower sales volumes in the period of 1 608 t of vanadium.

Group production for the period was 1 574 t of vanadium, a 5.2% year-on-year decrease as a result of unplanned stoppages, a 35-day planned maintenance shutdown during the first quarter and the unprotected industrial action at its Vametco operation, in the North West, in April.

An improved operational performance at Vametco post the maintenance programme and other operational enhancements initiated by the new management, increased second-quarter production by 28.8% quarter-on-quarter, which, combined with the higher production at Vanchem, resulted in group production for the six months being 13.4% higher year-on-year.

The operational stability has laid a platform for sustainable growth and lower unit costs for the rest of the year in line with production cash cost guidance at both plants.

Bushveld reported a loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of $10.8-million, primarily as a result of a stronger rand:dollar exchange rate on costs, resulting in a negative impact of $7.3-million.

The improved operational performance at Vametco in the period was not sufficient to offset the challenging start in the previous quarter.

Bushveld has sustaining capital expenditure of $6.1-million, supporting the recent operational stability.

Cash and cash equivalents at period-end was $31.6-million.

About $12.7-million was realised from the sale of the investment in Invinity Energy Systems and the profit on the sale is not included in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation.

The profit realised on the original investment of $5-million was about $7.7-million.

Net debt at period-end was $54.4-million, including a production financing agreement (PFA) of $29.3-million.

Bushveld is on track to meet full-year group production guidance of between 3 400 t and 3 600 t and ramping up at Vanchem using the reallocated PFA capital ringfencing, to increase group production to a steady-state run rate of between 5 000 t and 5 400 t by the end of 2022.

A total of 174 MW of clean, green renewable power is on the way for Sibanye-Stillwater’s platinum group metal (PGM) mines in South Africa.

The total cost of the three project scheme will be in the order of R2.5-billion to R2.8-billion.

They will be funded through third-party power price agreement arrangements, Sibanye-Stillwater energy and decarbonisation head Jevon Martin said.

Speaking on value creation through sustainability at a PGMs webinar covered by Mining Weekly, Martin said that this would result in the Johannesburg- and New York-listed company having minimum capital outlay to access renewable energy at a 30% to 50% discount to grid power “from day one”.

This would generate a significant net present value for these operations plus significant decarbonisation. It would also offset the liabilities of anticipated pending Scope 2 carbon taxes.

“We are currently targeting financial close in the first half of 2023 and commercial operation in early 2025,” said Martin.

The project schedule is currently being driven by permitting processes, of which the environmental impact assessment, the rezoning and the subdivision of land had already been initiated, he added.

Sibanye-Stillwater’s South African PGM operations account for 310 MW, or 39%, of the group’s energy demand.

Owing to the infrastructure and extensive conventional mining methods, electricity is the predominant form of energy and, as a result, 97% of the emissions stem from Eskom coal-fired and other diesel-fired electricity.

It is anticipated that this emission profile will decline over time, in line with Sibanye-Stillwater’s PGMs production profile, as well as when the renewable energy mix increases in the national electricity grid.

However, a number of active decarbonisation measures are currently under way ahead of that amelioration.

Similar to Sibanye-Stillwater’s gold operations, the PGM operations have advanced energy management practices, which last year resulted in 60 000 t of greenhouse gas emissions being avoided, primarily through the deployment of digital twin simulations as well as the development of an energy culture.

Owing to the emissions profile, one of the strongest levers that the company can pull is the deployment of renewable energy, with three upcoming solar photovoltaic (PV) projects and wind energy projects with allocated wheeling poised to enable rapid decarbonisation of these particular operations.

The use of battery electric vehicles is also being looked into to replace the diesel-driven vehicles used in the mechanised operations.

Scope 3 targets are also being set for those emissions that occur through the third-party processing of the company’s concentrate, where electricity will continue to remain the focus of this operation owing to its emissions predominance.

Given the company’s expanded footprint in North West province, it first undertook initial prefeasibility studies and then later a feasibility study into embedded solar PV power generation directly into the operations.

The studies confirmed the strong rationale around deploying these projects given their decarbonisation and commercial potential.

These long-life assets, as well as the associated demand, could easily support up to 175 MW of solar PV across the three specific sites. Proposed are:

an 80 MW PV project located within the Rustenburg Platinum Mines complex, specifically between the Bathopele mine and the upper group two (UG2) concentrator;

a 65 MW PV project colocated within the Karee complex to supply the K4 shaft, the K3 shaft as well as the K3 concentrator; and

a 30 MW PV project on the eastern portion of the footprint to inject power directly into the Roland smelter.

The assessment included an extensive land study that confirmed the land availability to accommodate the solar PV, with no critical engineering, environmental, geotechnical, regulatory, social or security flaws.

“We also confirmed that we have adequate substations that will allow the solar PV projects to ...

The mining industry has vaccinated, or partially vaccinated, 203 007 employees and contractors in South Africa – that is about 45% of the workforce.

Of that total, 49

%

have been now been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

The industry has set itself a target of achieving 80% vaccination by the middle of November this year. Some companies have already started reporting between 70% and 80% vaccination levels at some sites, and Minerals Council South Africa CEO Roger Baxter said the goal was “absolutely attainable”.

Baxter drew specific attention to the leadership role played by organised labour, which had been critical in advocating for vaccinations among employees and supporting the company-based roll-out programmes.

Involved organised labour include the Association of Construction and Mineworkers Union (AMCU), the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Solidarity and UASA.

“Union leadership has played a highly constructive role, with many union leaders visiting vaccination sites, getting vaccinated, and also sharing their personal experiences of Covid-19 and vaccinations,” Baxter said during the virtual event on Thursday.

“This has truly been a massive mining industry effort, with unprecedented levels of cooperation between companies, with the Minerals Council, with national and regional departments of health, with the Department of Minerals Resources and Energy and the Chief Inspector of Mines, with business entities such as Business for South Africa (B4SA), and of course our mining unions,” he enthused.

To date, 52 workplace sites have been registered under the Department of Health’s workplace vaccination programme, with many more outreach and temporary facilities operating.

Companies that have fewer than 4 000 employees have teamed up with private companies and provincial departments of health to offer on-mine vaccination, while others have been served by a number of larger companies that have availed their facilities.

“Not only has the industry established vaccination sites under strict guidelines, it has also embarked on extensive education and communication campaigns both amongst employees and community members,” said Baxter.

Meanwhile, companies have started to vaccinate employees’ dependants and community members, either at company sites or by supporting neighbouring facilities.

“While we know that vaccinating as many employees and community members as possible will reduce transmission of Covid-19 and prevent serious illness and death, we know that we need to continue to be vigilant and continue to practice all the non-medical interventions that we have developed since the start of the pandemic,” Baxter said.

Up until September 22, the South African mining industry had conducted more than 287 000 Covid-19 tests, which Minerals Council health head Dr Thuthula Balfour said was “double that of the national average”.

From these tests, a total of 51 084 people tested positive, with only 424 of these still active.

The industry has lost 690 lives to the Covid-19 pandemic, which gives it a fatality rate of about 1.3%.

Taking into account the first, second and third waves of infection, Balfour stressed the importance of vaccinations as it would “make a difference” in mitigating the impacts of the expected fourth wave.

It is important to note that the renewable energy focus of coal company Exxaro is not a new focus but a re-focus on a strategy that has been in evidence for more than ten years, says Exxaro Energy MD Roland Tatnall.

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange company’s strategy just unveiled has been the culmination of steps taken by the company over the past decade to become a global renewable energy solutions provider by 2030.

“Our purpose is to drive carbon neutrality by 2050 and to provide better lives in Africa and beyond,” says Tatnall.

In looking to power a clean world it has already commenced with its own generation projects and an expansion of its services business.

It has already transitioned some of its mining colleagues through renewables training for integration into the renewables team as part of building on its skills base organically.

‘We’re looking to enter new markets in a low-risk way, through either partnerships or acquisition,” says Tatnall.

Exxaro, through its wholly owned group company Cennergi, is already South Africa’s second largest locally owned renewables developer after Old Mutual, with two wind farms totalling 229 MW and nine solar facilities of 2 MW each. It will be generating a further 70 MW of green power at its large Grootegeluk coal mine, in Limpopo, with plans also in place for Belfast and Matla, the group’s other two main coal mines.

Returns of 15% are being targeted on a portfolio basis, with the thrust projected to earn an additional R6-billion of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) by 2030.

“A simple, lean, empowered and agile” approach is being targeted for the new business.

Over the past 18 months, Exxaro advanced its renewable energy business intensely to support its decarbonisation goals, along with its ambitions for sustainable growth through the development of the three pillars of distributed generation, utility generation and asset management services.

The company has built a team to provide green energy solutions domestically and abroad and it is projecting that 70% of its earnings will be non-coal earnings by 2030.

It has been engaging with various mines in South Africa to provide them with bespoke renewable solutions.

“Ultimately, we’re looking to provide renewable energy solutions to the private and public sectors in select markets globally,” says Tatnall.

On distributed generation, he adds: “It’s a sector that is a high-growth sub-sector. It’s still at a nascent stage in South Africa, but it is also a higher-return environment. We’re dealing with private-to-private transactions with bespoke solutions and that necessarily involves higher returns than the utility generation pillar.

“We’re targeting above 3 MW per project, scaling to over potentially 100 MW per project,” he says.

In utility generation, where it already has two 229 MW assets, it is targeting above 20 MW and is continuing to appraise the South African market from a utility perspective. On South Africa’s Bid Window 5, it took a decision not to enter at this stage, on the basis of the risk-adjusted returns not meeting its investment criteria.

Services, where it already has 11 assets under management, is being targeted for strong growth and could potentially be its own standalone business.

“It enables us to seek new customers and to broaden our customer base and deliver new services, beyond just our asset base, and ultimately, into the future, we’re looking into further horizontal integration of additional services and potentially disruptive digital models as the distribution base grows in South Africa and beyond,” Tatnall outlines.

Merger and acquisition opportunities are being looked at across three pillars to enable the company to transition at speed and at scale and to enter new markets in a low-risk way.

The general feeling is that chip capacity will slowly start coming back in the next few months, but only to return the auto industry back to where it was pre-Covid, and not to the post-Covid surge, which resulted in platinum group metals (PGMs) prices going through the roof.

If the global auto industry experiences an increasing delivery of chips, then the guess is that a bottoming out of the market can be regarded as being under way now, with gentle improvement to follow. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

The extremely high price gains that the PGMs market experienced with particularly rhodium and palladium – and even platinum rising to $1 250/oz for a short spell – were driven by the auto industry globally recovering strongly post-Covid.

Since then, despite vaccine progress, Covid variants have made their way through country after country, causing delivery inconsistency. Extreme weather also played a role in worsening logistics, which has resulted in considerable supply-chain disruption.

But the biggest impact of all has been the shortage of chips that host the processing and memory units, which have become synonymous with modern vehicle travel.

That is the view of Integral Asset Management chief investment officer Bruce Williamson, who spoke to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview.

The upshot has been lower demand for cars, diminished auto manufacturing numbers, less demand for PGMs and sharply falling PGM spot prices.

“The spot market is not your friend right now,” said Williamson.

The rhodium price has fallen by nearly 60%, palladium is the lowest since August last year, and platinum is down 28%.

“So, we’ve seen a very, very significant pullback and I guess the question is whether the current prices would hold. Ordinarily, I would have said yes, but there are market uncertainties as to exactly when chip capacity will be able to make the auto industry happy again.

“The general feeling is that chip capacity will slowly start coming back in the next few months. That’ll get the auto industry back to where it was pre-Covid. But it probably, until next year sometime, won’t get the auto industry back to the post-Covid highs, which took the prices to extreme highs. If we see increasing delivery of chips, then my guess is that we're probably seeing the market bottoming out here now and I wouldn’t say rush up, but it could gently improve,” said Williamson.

Mining Weekly: Do you expect the rhodium price to get back to its previous high level?

Williamson: Rhodium being just short of $30 000/oz was very, very high and that was driven by an absolute shortage of supply and very strong auto demand from the motor industry that could not afford not to buy. You had global manufacturers chasing a pretty small amount of rhodium in the market. But the way I see the chip manufacturing unfolding is that it won’t be strong enough to take the price back to those levels. Let’s hope that we’ve seen the worst now and that these levels can hold.

Is the palladium price also vulnerable to further pullback?

Since about mid-June, we’ve seen the auto industry starting to cut back on production due to the chip shortage and that means that either the miners themselves are going to be stockpiling 5%, 10%, 15% of their PGMs, or the auto industry, not wanting to be caught short, holding PGMs as stock. Every month that goes by and chip supply does not recover will mean that PGMs inventory is building up. You can just imagine that if this goes on for six, seven months, then suddenly there’ll be sufficient stockpiled supply in the pipeline for a while. It’s a particularly difficult period to work out exactly what chip capacity will be delivered to the global auto industry. In the Chilean market, for example, they’re waiting 13 months for new cars, so you can see that the chip shortage is extreme. Part of the problem, I think, is that the chip manufacturers know that 5G technology and infrastructure is being rolled out around the world. I suspect that 5G te...

The Minerals Council South Africa has welcomed the High Court judgment that the Mining Charter is not binding legislation, but rather an instrument of policy and that mining companies will not be required to “top-up” their empowerment credentials.

The Minerals Council has sought a judicial review of the third iteration of the Mining Charter, published in 2018, with its primary concern being the provisions on how previous black economic empowerment (BEE) is not recognised in the renewal and transfer of mining rights.

The High Court ruling, handed down by Judge Fayeeza Kathree-Setiloane on Tuesday, removed the clauses dealing with the renewals of existing mining rights and the transfers of mining rights, compelling mining companies to “top up” their BEE shareholdings to the 2018 Charter levels, which would have the effect of diluting shareholders.

The industry has raised concern about retaining mandatory BEE ownership in perpetuity, arguing that it will stifle investment in the sector.

The ruling has confirmed the “once empowered, always empowered” principle, and that therefore, the historically disadvantaged South African ownership status of existing mining right holders, which wish to renew or transfer their rights, must automatically be recognised by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE).

“The judgment has a materially positive impact on the security of tenure of existing mining rights holders. As a result, existing mining right holders now know that if they previously satisfied the empowerment requirements imposed under any version of the charter, they will not be required to do so again,” said Herbert Smith Freehills South Africa partner and Africa chairperson Peter Leon.

Leon also commented that the judgement vindicated his long-held view that the Mining Charter, in all its iterations, was simply a policy document and not a statutory instrument such as an Act or regulations.

“. . . Mining Charter III cannot give rise to legally binding obligations,” he said, stressing that it was “nothing more than a socioeconomic compact between government, labour and the mining industry”.

The original Charter, signed in October 2002, Leon highlighted, reflected exactly this principle.

“Regrettably the 2010 and 2018 versions purported to turn what was no more than a compact into a binding legislative instrument with all the associated regulatory uncertainty,” said Leon.

He said that “hopefully, this carefully reasoned and strong judgment will give the DMRE cause to reflect on what has gone wrong in the past ten years and put the industry back on a much-needed path of regulatory certainty and predictability”.

The judgment also sets aside the provisions around procurement of goods and services (especially the capital goods target), and supplier and enterprise development which the Minerals Council argued contained unachievable targets for mining companies to meet, making compliance with the 2018 Charter problematic.

The judgment also sets aside provisions in the 2018 Charter related to the Diamonds Act and Precious Metals Act to impose targets set out in the Charter on licence holders under those Acts.

The provisions in the 2018 Charter related to mining companies not complying with ownership and mine community development requirements, and thus being in breach of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, potentially having their mining rights suspended or cancelled was also removed in the judgment.

Law firm Webber Wentzel’s Jonathan Veeran, Bruce Dickinson and Rita Spalding commented that the judgement, although sound in law, was likely to be appealed.

Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and Energy Sahlulele Luzipo has welcomed the judgement, but said that it could potentially bring challenges to the existing harmony between the mining sector and the regulator.

“Although there is no winner or loser, the judgement may create an environment where the regulator resorts to legislating ever...

Cennergi, the wholly owned renewable energy arm of coal mining company Exxaro and South Africa’s second-largest renewable energy company, is being deployed to decarbonise the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed company’s own coal mines.

In addition, Exxaro, through Cennergi, is in discussion with other mining companies to bring them green energy from a mining know-how position and help them on their way to significant decarbonisation.

“We’ve been playing in this decarbonising space as a business from as early as 2009 because the net benefit of decarbonisation that comes about by introducing renewables is the part that really sets us into the next phase of our own decarbonisation strategy,” Exxaro CEO Mxolisi Mgojo explained in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Exxaro created renewable energy company Cennergi in 2012 and built two renewable wind farms with a combined capacity of 229 MW in the Eastern Cape in 2016.

In 2019, it acquired 100% of Cennergi, which is taking steps with a view to generate renewable energy for Exxaro’s Grootegeluk, Belfast and Matla coal mines.

The net benefit for Grootegeluk alone is going to be a 70 MW renewable energy solution, developed by Cennergi on an arm’s length based contract.

Grootegeluk will be the offtaker with Cennergi helping the large Exxaro coal mine to secure electricity security at lower cost on a reduced carbon footprint.

“That renewable energy solution, on its own, is going to reduce Grootegeluk’s carbon emissions by 35% - just one project,” Mgojo enthused.