KwaZulu-Natal Business 2016-17 edition

OVERVIEW
ferrochrome at Richards Bay.
Safa Steel has a fairly new metalcoating
factory in Cato Manor.
Hulamin makes rolled products at
three sites in the province while
the Pietermartizburg facility also
makes extrusion products.
The provincial government
is keen to promote the downstream
beneficiation of metals
within the Richards Bay area. A
feasibility study on establishing
a Metals Hub returned a positive
verdict.
A small-scale mining Imbizo
was held in August 2015 to
look into regulations, access to
funding, and technical support
mechanisms for small-scale
mining. Since then, the province
has produced the KZN Mineral
Beneficiation Strategy. The first
area of focus is coal and phosphate.
There is a provincial commitment
to using waste material
from the mineral sector as a
source for beneficiated building
materials and five commodity
value chains are going to
be examined in detail, namely
Aluminium, Coal, Iron and Steel,
Phosphates and Mineral Sands.
Coal
Some of the province’s coalfields
have been revived and the export
facilities at Richards Bay make a
massive contribution to the functioning
of the country’s mining
sector.
Petmin's Somkhele Anthracite
Mine, north of Richards Bay, has
one of the biggest reserves of
open-pit anthracite in South
Africa, with measured and indicated reserves of more than 51-
million tons across its four areas.
In 2015 the local community of about 175 000 became 20% shareholders
in the mine. The Petmin holding company is already 'empowered'
(ie, 26% black ownership).
Although the second six months of 2015 saw some reduction in
production due to geological conditions, the mine still produced more
in the year than the benchmarked annual figure of 1.2-million tons of
metallurgical anthracite for ferro-alloy smelting. Somkhele also mines a
lower-grade coal, what is known as 'energy coal'. Its annual capacity for this
type of coal is about 350 000 tons: in the six months to December 2015,
production was 8% down on the previous year (namely 157 000 tons).
Buffalo Coal Corporation (formerly Forbes Coal) has Canadian roots
and has two assets near Dundee: Magdalena Colliery (production capacity
of 100 000 tons of saleable bituminous coal per month) and Aviemore
Colliery (45 500 tons of anthracite coal). The company has two processing
plants.
Other minerals
Idwala Industrial Holdings quarries and mills white calcitic and dolomitic
limestone near Port Shepstone, where NPC Cimpor also runs a
quarry which produces sand, shale and limestone.
Umzimkhulu Industrial Holdings obtained new mining rights in the
course of 2015, from the national Department of Mineral Resources.
The company has the rights to mine near Port Shepstone and the
provincial government put the value of the investment at R187-million,
with the creation of 48 jobs.
The northern region has deposits of aluminium and calcitic marbles.
Some low-grade bauxite is found. Vein gold mining is undertaken
near the northern border with Mozambique. The Umzinto goldfield
has several sites, but mining has only ever been on a small scale. Sand
and aggregate are produced by Vryheid-based WH Lemmon-Warde
Holdings, Lafarge and Afrisam. Corobrik has several facilities in and
around Durban.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Chamber of Mines South Africa: www.bullion.org.za
Council for Geoscience: www.geoscience.org.za
Geological Sciences, University of KZN: www.geology.ukzn.ac.za
Geological Society of South Africa: www.gssa.org.za
National Department of Mineral Resources: www.dmr.gov.za
Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy:
www.saimm.co.za
79 KWAZULU-NATAL BUSINESS 2016/17