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MiningWeekly.com provides real time news reportage through originated written & video material. Now you can listen to the top three articles on Mining Weekly at the end of each day.

  1. há 5 h

    Green hydrogen seen as having potential to trigger new green industrialisation

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. Green hydrogen, which is produced with the help of platinum group metals (PGMs) could become the catalyst for new green iron, green steel, green chemicals and beneficiation industries built on South Africa's mineral and renewable energy advantages. "The real prize is not hydrogen — it's industrialisation. The opportunity is significant if South Africa can align infrastructure, investment and skills development," Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy president Gary Lane pointed out on LinkedIn in response to Mining Weekly's report on June 5 about South Africa's green hydrogen and power-to-x (PtX) project development standard (PDS). Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau and Electricity and Energy Deputy Minister Samantha Graham-Maré officially launched the PtX PDS on May 19 during the World Hydrogen Summit in Rotterdam. The initiative is described as marking an important step in strengthening South Africa's pipeline of credible, investment-ready green hydrogen and PtX projects by Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan Programme Management Office stakeholder specialist Collins Nyamadzawo. The standard introduces a structured and transparent process through which project developers can demonstrate technical, commercial, financial, and operational readiness through the standardised questionnaire and assessment platform aligned with investor and development finance institution expectations. PGMs are key in electrolysers that turn water into green hydrogen and then also key in turning hydrogen back into green electricity for green steel, green cement, green chemicals, data centres, AI, off-grid communities, and many other products. In Namibia, Hyphen Hydrogen Energy, which has announced a strategic partnership with GIZ Namibia, is inviting qualified firms or consortia to submit proposals for the development of an enterprise and supplier development programme tailored specifically for Namibia's emerging green hydrogen industry. Hyphen is committed to ensuring that Namibia's green energy future is built and benefits Namibian enterprises. Kenya has reportedly approved 15 projects targeting a combined 5 GW of captive renewable energy generation, marking the East African country's move to enter the global hydrogen economy. The initiatives are designed to leverage Kenya's energy mix, which already derives over 90% of its power from renewable sources like geothermal, wind, and solar to develop entirely new industrial value chains. Specifically, these projects will focus on the local production of green ammonia and zero-emission fertilisers, sustainable aviation fuel, methanol, and hydrogen-based green steel. By prioritising these sectors, Kenya aims to spark export-led industrialisation and establish itself as a primary supplier within the emerging global clean-energy supply chain, moving from a position of strategic leadership rather than from the margins. As the world looks beyond batteries alone, PGMs are once again becoming a strategic conversation, it was stated in a release on June 8 to publicise Zimbabwe's upcoming Zimbabwe Mining Week, the special focus of which will be the future of PGMs in a hydrogen economy amid the next chapter of the energy transition beginning with platinum. To support the automotive sector's energy transition, Toyota South Africa has announced that it will invest R10.4-billion in KwaZulu-Natal to strengthen local manufacturing for a more sustainable future. Toyota North America, meanwhile, plans to deploy hydrogen fuel cell-powered Class 8 trucks in its commercial logistics fleets by early 2027. The automotive company has also signed an agreement with Air Liquide for the supply hydrogen fuel for the company's growing fleet. The brand-new Toyota ...

    5 min

  2. há 9 h

    Stormlands says NPV of Mexican project can almost double using dynamic modelling

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. A clear example of why mining project valuation should be dynamic is the Cerro Caliche project, in Mexico, which can have its net present value (NPV) valuation increase by $253-million using updated commodity prices, says analytics platform Stormlands Mining. Using its AI-first mining valuation platform to model project economics from publicly available technical information, Stormlands is able to create an illustrative economic model on projects, which takes into account current commodity prices. Stormlands finds in a new independent case study on Cerro Caliche that the project's after-tax NPV increases to $475-million using current commodity prices, compared with the project owner Sonoro Gold Corporation's last technical report (December 2025) determining a $224-million NPV and Stormlands' own base case modelling NPV of $222-million. The updated case study uses a gold price of $4 877/oz and a silver price of $74.92/oz. Estimated revenue generation by the project increases from $1.6-billion in Stormlands' base case scenario to $2.2-billion under the updated commodity price scenario. Life-of-mine (LoM) earnings also increase from $726-million in the base case scenario to $1.35-billion in the updated scenario, while the modelled payback period improves from one year and seven months to 11 months. Stormlands demonstrates in its Cerro Caliche case study the project's sensitivity to key economic drivers – firstly gold prices, followed by operating costs, recovery assumptions and mine scheduling. For example, a 10% reduction in operating costs increases the modelled NPV to $255-million while a 10% increase in operating costs reduces the NPV to $189-million. Stormlands finds that, in Cerro Caliche's case, capital cost sensitivity is more limited, reflecting the relatively modest capital intensity of the proposed heap leach development, compared with the project's LoM revenue base. Stormlands CEO Róisín O'Connell says a technical report provides a base case for a gold project but the economics of one can change materially as commodity prices move. "In this published case study, we have only updated the commodity price assumptions, while keeping the mine plan, costs, recoveries, capital and fiscal assumptions unchanged. Even that single change has a material impact on valuation," he explains. The broader point is that Stormlands' models are built to "go further" than static technical report numbers. Once the model is structured, users can test changes across the full project economics – from grades, recoveries, throughput, operating costs and capital costs, through to royalties, fiscal regimes, financing assumptions, inflation and discount rates. "By rebuilding the model and making those assumptions dynamic, we can see in real time how the project behaves under current market conditions and where the real value drivers sit," O'Connell explains. He motivates that public technical reports contain the data required to build robust economic models, but those models need to be updateable and comparable if they are to support better decision-making.

    3 min

  3. há 3 dias

    New cadastre, Sam Molefi, PyroFuZA make headlines

    Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer discusses the new online mining licensing system that has begun with Western Cape applications; Sam Molefi's Modi Mining operation; and PyroFuZA, which sees a positive value-add future for South Africa.

    6 min

  4. há 3 dias

    Tesla co founder-backed copper maker Red Metals secures seed funding for US refining plant

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. Canada-listed copper manufacturer Red Metals has secured $10-million in seed funding which will contribute to its planned $70-million facility in Charleston, South Carolina, to scale its novel copper refining process designed to reshore the manufacturing of finished copper products to the US. The funding round was led by a company called Gigascale Capital, with participation from Future Ventures, MCJ and JB Straubel, who is the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials and co-founder of Tesla. Red Metals has also secured economic incentives from South Carolina and Charleston Country to support development of its first production facility, which reduces the complexity of traditional copper refining methods. The company's first facility in Charleston will produce high-conductivity copper rod. US copper demand is expected to increase by more than one-million tons a year through 2035, which will result in a domestic market value of more than $45-billion. At the same mine, American copper production capacity has declined, with the US poised to face a refined copper supply gap of more than 2.5-million tons by 2035 - even if every major announced mining project comes online. Red Metals explains that a key bottleneck in the industry is the refining process. Conventional copper refining moves material through multiple intermediate products, including concentrate, matte, anode, cathode and rod. Designed for ore that is often less than 1% copper, the legacy process requires significant energy, time and working capital to move material across numerous facilities, operators, and often multiple countries before reaching a finished product pure enough for industrial use. "America has the feedstocks, the demand, and the workforce to produce copper domestically at scale. What it has lacked is an economically viable refining process. To this end, Red Metals is building an integrated, modern model that converts copper feedstocks directly into finished products closer to where they're needed, reducing supply chain complexity while strengthening domestic manufacturing," says Red Metals founder and CEO Jackson Switzer. Red Metals will integrate physical processing, advanced sorting, and metallurgical refining into a single continuous operation, converting copper feedstocks directly into finished products while eliminating the intermediate steps that add cost, time, and emissions in conventional refining. The process is designed to be feedstock-flexible, initially focused on domestic copper scrap, and to make domestic copper refining commercially viable without subsidies to help rebuild the industrial base and skilled manufacturing workforce needed for the twenty-first century. The company's first commercial product will be high-conductivity copper rod, the industry-standard input used in wire, magnet wire, and other electrical applications. Straubel comments that electricity and industry run on copper, and the US has spent decades offshoring the refining and manufacturing capacity needed to produce it. "Red Metals has the rare combination of technical depth and operational pragmatism needed to rebuild that capability. What Red Metals is building is exactly the kind of industrial infrastructure America needs more of." Gigascale Capital partner Victoria Beasley adds that the demand signal for domestically refined copper is undeniable, but the domestic infrastructure needed to support it barely exists today. "Red Metals is the first company we've seen combining genuine process innovation with the execution capability required to rebuild it."

    3 min

  5. há 3 dias

    South African green hydrogen first-movers given major boost

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. Enticing support for first movers into green hydrogen project development is on offer via a first-of-a-kind government-led framework designed to assess the readiness and bankability of green hydrogen and power-to-x (PtX) projects in South Africa. This follows South Africa's official launch of the PtX project development standard (PDS), which includes green hydrogen and PtX developers being invited to register their projects and complete the PtX PDS questionnaire, with the assurance that all information will be treated as confidential and shared only with authorised partner institutions. "The questionnaire takes less than 60 minutes to complete, in less time than it would take to prepare and drink a cappuccino, offering project developers a practical and efficient route to position their projects within a recognised national framework for investment readiness and investor engagement," Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan (JET-IP) Green Hydrogen Programme Management Office (GH-PMO) director Dr Rebecca Maserumule outlined in a media release to Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Readers will recall that at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) conference in Vienna on April 8, Maserumule described South Africa as being at the same green hydrogen inflection point today that it was with renewable energy in 2009. "We've done it with renewables successfully. We moved from strategy and policy to execution very well and I think today we're standing here in 2026 because we had a great run of moving to renewables and getting projects on the ground. "This is what makes the next stage of just adding an electrolyser, moving the molecules, either for domestic or export, really enabling for South Africa. This is why I know, without any doubt in my mind, we can do it," Maserumule insisted, while emphasising the need to support first movers with funding to make things happen. In welcoming the launch, South Africa's Department of Electricity and Energy (DEE) hailed the PtX PDS as a key instrument to support a credible and investment-ready pipeline of green hydrogen and PtX projects. The department described green hydrogen as a strategic, cross-cutting sector linking electricity planning, industrial development, trade, infrastructure, permitting and finance. PtX embraces technologies that use renewable electricity to produce green hydrogen, which is then converted into sustainable fuels, chemicals, and raw materials and enables the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, shipping, and chemical manufacturing. "UNIDO remains firmly committed to advancing the hydrogen agenda in South Africa, including continued technical and partnership support to the Industrial Development Corporation's (IDC's) JET-IP GH-PMO and key stakeholders of the hydrogen economy in South Africa," UNIDO Climate and Technology Partnership Division chief Petra Schwager reported. The United Nations organisation has provided technical support to strengthen the scoring and weighting methodology of South Africa's South Africa's PtX PDS framework, convening international sectorial technical specialists and development partners. "Leveraging its mandate as an industrial development organisation, UNIDO – through its dedicated hydrogen expertise and platforms – stands ready to provide strategic and targeted technical assistance to accelerate project development toward investment readiness and operationalisation," Schwager added. Launched by the DEE and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, the PtX PDS is being implemented by the JET-IP GH-PMO, which is hosted at the IDC. A strong endorsement of the PtX project development standard template was made by the IDC, which described it as a catalytic ...

    7 min

  6. há 4 dias

    Sherritt appoints finance veteran interim CFO to steer through Cuba challenges

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. Having warned shareholders of acute financial, legal and operational challenges ahead owing to US sanctions in Cuba last month, TSX-listed Sherritt International Corporation has appointed Fitzroy Richardson as interim CFO effective immediately. The company explains Richardson's appointment will provide experienced financial leadership as the corporation works to complete its outstanding quarterly filings, an important step toward seeking a revocation of a failure-to-file cease trade order issued by the Ontario Securities Commission on May 21. "Richardson brings deep knowledge of Sherritt's business, strong financial leadership and extensive experience across treasury and international operations. His appointment strengthens our leadership team at an important time providing continuity and support," says Sherritt interim president and CEO Peter Hancock. Richardson is a seasoned finance executive with nearly 30 years of experience at Sherritt, where he has held a range of senior finance and treasury roles. Having held a number of senior roles at the company, his latest position has been president of a Sherritt subsidiary called New Providence Metals Marketing. Sherritt is a world leader in using hydrometallurgical processes to mine and refine nickel and cobalt. The corporation operates a strategically important refinery in Alberta, Canada, recognised as the only significant cobalt refinery and one of just three nickel refineries in North America. For context, the US administration announced an executive order on May 1, which involved expanded sanctions against Cuba. The company has since suspended its direct participation in joint venture activities in Cuba and is working with stakeholders and advisers to implement appropriate steps to address the US executive order.

    2 min

  7. há 4 dias

    New cadastre processing W Cape mining licence applications, Parliament hears

    This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation. The phased rollout of the new online mining licensing system – the cadastre – is progressing steadily, with Western Cape applications being received and processed online, Parliament was informed on June 3 during the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources' National Council of Provinces Budget Vote 34. The migration from the old system to the new platform has been completed in the Western Cape, and the implementation is now progressing towards other regions, Minerals and Petroleum Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe reported during this week's National Council of Provinces budget vote 34 of the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources. "We're pleased to share that the system has been tested and found to be operational in the Western Cape, with applications being received and processed online," Mantashe added. Lessons drawn from the Western Cape experience would, he said, assist in accelerating implementation across South Africa. Regarding legislative reform, it was reported that the Mineral Resources Development Bill is being refined to incorporate stakeholder inputs. Once all processes are completed, including legal certification, the Bill will be submitted to Cabinet for approval ahead of being introduced to Parliament for consideration and adoption, which is expected to take place during the three months ending September 30. A key pillar of the government strategy to position South Africa in the global critical mineral's economy is geoscience mapping and exploration, which is being advanced through the integrated and multi-disciplinary geoscience mapping programme. This has reportedly increased national onshore mapping coverage from below 5% in 2019 to a cumulative 20% in the 2025/26 financial year. Thirteen exploration projects have been funded through the Junior Mining Exploration Fund and the results of its first drilling project in Bothaville, targeting rare earth elements and associated minerals, are currently being interpreted. The second project in Giyani, targeting copper, nickel, and gold, is nearing completion. Despite prevailing global economic pressures, the South African mining industry continues to demonstrate resilience. This is evidenced by South Africa's mining gross value add reaching R477-billion in 2025, contributing an estimated 6.3% to the country's gross domestic product. Mining royalties to the fiscus totalled R11.8-billion in 2025, an increase of 11% from the R10.6-billion recorded in 2024. Mining export revenue from primary minerals reached R649-billion, increasing from R586-billion in 2024. Social and labour plan implementation was highlighted last month with the handing over in Steelpoort of a new four-lane bridge, which replaced a single-lane century-old bridge. That bridge stands as a physical symbol of mining companies pooling resources together to deliver infrastructure that no single entity could have achieved independently, the Minister stated. For the 2026/27 financial year, the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources has been allocated R2.86-billion, of which R1.17-billion will be transferred to public entities and strategic programmes. Operational allocations include R70.46-million for the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator, R94.98-million for the Petroleum Agency South Africa, R666.9-million for the Council for Geoscience, R328.7-million for Mintek, and R4.89-million for the Mine Health and Safety Council. Project-specific allocations include R23.48-million for the Mine Rehabilitation Research Project., R140.87 million for the Rehabilitation of derelict and ownerless mines, R48.1-million for the implementation of the Shale Gas Project, R33.83-million for the Mine Water Ingress Project, and R31.12-million for the Artisanal ...

    4 min

  8. há 4 dias

    IN FOCUS: Copper Demand in an Electrifying and Digitising World

    Investment in electricity grids is set to become the single most important driver of copper demand over the coming decades, underpinning growth from renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs) and artificial intelligence (AI), says Wood Mackenzie head of copper research Charles Coo

    22 min
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MiningWeekly.com provides real time news reportage through originated written & video material. Now you can listen to the top three articles on Mining Weekly at the end of each day.

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