On-The-Air (05/08/2016)

Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: Treated acid mine water was this week relished by analysts and journalists as they drank it down during a visit to a West Rand gold mine.

Creamer: Acid mine drainage is seen as a curse, all of a sudden it is being seen as a blessing. You go to a mine now and they want to offer you purified water that was polluted mine water, you then say that you are not that thirsty and they say have a go. You then drink it and you are absolutely surprised. It goes down singing hallelujah.

This is again an indication of the private sector actually able to do a lot. We see that the government through the TCTA has actually set up quite an elaborate infrastructure in Germiston to make sure that this acid mine water does not decant onto surface. You can see that they are really behind. This sort of thing happens with Sibanye Gold out on the West Wits actually converting this water into drinking water, bottled water, which now goes down to the mineworkers.

They are really enjoying it down there because they get it at a colder temperature nicely bottled. This is just the start of what you can do, because we have seen so many breakthroughs now with acid water. We have seen Trailblazer Technologies in Krugersdorp saying they can give us this purified for nothing because what they want to get is the materials that are for fertilisers, the potassium nitrates that they can put into the fertiliser business, which gives them so much money.

Again, Sibanye Gold out at their plant, it is much smaller than the TCTA plant and the capital cost is much less than what we have seen the government hurl into this. They still want to put in another R10-billion, but I think they should hang back a bit, because there are so many new examples that they can go into public-private partnerships with people who have already cracked this code.

We know that Trailblazer are saying that this is just the start, because acid mine drainage is small, it is the tip of the iceberg. When you come to the huge volumes of brackish groundwater in the Northern Cape if we can convert those into water that can go into agriculture development, they say we can have a Garden of Eden in our deserts. We can be exporting high value crops from out Upington Airport into Europe every day.

Kamwendo: Impressive farming is under way on mine property to ensure that the local economy is not hurt when the mines close 30 years from now.

Creamer: This is another step being taken by Sibanye Gold. I must say they were impressive when analysts and journalists went out there.

You could see that it is not just the shareholders that they really go all out to support and brother do they support their shareholders.

These shareholders have got 448% return since the company listed in 2013 and a 55% growth rate. That is incredible. But also they make sure that they look after their employees and communities. They have brought the communities into the farming business. We know that the people out at Bekkersdal were a bit restive for some time, they were not too happy with the mines. Now, all of a sudden you see those some people giving you a presentation with a lot of facts and figures at the site on the mine property they are growing vegetables.

These are very verdant looking vegetables and very well grown spinach that apparently is going into the Spar’s and retail sectors there. Also into the community. The work is done by the community all the skills are being developed by the community. They know their business and they do invite you to have worm tea, this is tea that I was not going to take. I took the acid mine drainage, but the worm tea is sort of like a liquid fertiliser that they have developed their organically.

They put it into the system and drip irrigate. This is just the start and it is already employing 640 people. What they want to do is to make sure that the economy is there when the mines stop giving out that wealth in 30 to 40 years, there is an economy going. We know that Gold Fields put up the long stem rose plant and they exported a lot of that. You can see that agriculture can be linked to the mining industry.

Kamwendo: Zimbabwe has until the end of the month to explain why it is imposing hostile trade restrictions on South African goods.

Creamer: Minister Rob Davies is the Trade and Industry Minister. Yesterday they set a deadline for them because they haven’t been forth coming with information. They were supposed to tell us at the end of June why they had become people who impose surcharges on South African imports.

Also, even more restricting is this statutory instrument 64 which is quite a hostile instrument that disrupts cross border trade. We know that they are in breach of the trade protocols. There are trade protocols and they are allowing people to import goods into their country that are outside of the region but stopping people in the region like South Africa from coming in. Now Rob Davies says please tell us and the deadline is the end of August.

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