Competition approval awaited for re-start of major ferromanganese facility - Menar

Private investment company Menar, which is awaiting Competition Commission approval following its bid for the large Metalloys ferromanganese facility in Meyerton, is looking to restart at least two of the four furnaces on the site of what was once the world's largest ferromanganese production facility before being shut in 2020.
Bringing two furnaces back online would provide the base for the production of 500 000 t of ferromanganese a year and require a feed of one-million tonnes of manganese ore from South African mines.
"When Samancor decided to close the operations, it was purely because of issues with power availability. Now with Eskom having surplus power, the opportunity is created for ferroalloy producers and Metalloys is one of them," Menar MD Vuslat Bayoglu outlined to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)
Menar intends changing the name of Metalloys to Khwelamet.
Metalloys was once a producer of one-million tonnes of ferromanganese a year on a property that has a gas-fired power station, which Menar would like to revive in tandem with baseload from Eskom, waste-to-power generation and solar power generation.
"We're hoping that by either the end of this year, or early next year, we'll get Competition Commission approval if the authorities are happy with our application. If the numbers make sense, then we will hopefully restart the operations in the next 12 months. That's the plan," Bayoglu revealed.
"It's critical to make the product as green as possible and in addition to restarting the ferromanganese furnaces, we'd like to create an energy complex in the area. Hopefully this project will keep us busy next year.
"If you think about the 16-million tonne to 17-million tonne export capacity from South African manganese mines, a million tonnes is a sizable amount for the mines to supply for ferromanganese production. Assmang decided to close its operation in Cato Ridge, in KwaZulu-Natal. Without it, there will be no ferromanganese production capacity in South Africa, so reviving Metalloys will ensure that the country still has capacity. It will also be great for employment opportunities within the Vereeniging and Meyerton areas," Bayoglu added.
Menar's portfolio of mining assets spans anthracite, coal, manganese, gold, and nickel.
Mining Weekly: Given the closeness to year-end, talk us through Menar's 2024 highlights.
Bayoglu: I'd like to start with what we achieved with our rehabilitation projects. The rehabilitation project at Singani Colliery is almost complete. We're at the stage of dealing with the vegetation, and hopefully by quarter one of next year, we'll be done. We've finished mining our resource at Phalanndwa, in Delmas, and we started rehabilitating the two pits there immediately.
We're hoping to be done with the first pit by the first quarter of next year, so we can start working on the second area, which we call the Madala pit. Hopefully, we will complete the work on the second pit by the end of next year. These are important highlights because these are environmental liabilities and we think that as a responsible miner, we should deal with the rehabilitation once the resource is depleted.
On the operational side, we were ramping up the Gugulethu Colliery in Hendrina, Mpumalanga, where last month we produced 150 000 t of run of mine (RoM) coal, and washed about 90 000 t. Hopefully, we'll reach steady-state production in January, which will be 200 000 t of RoM. We may reach it in December, depending on what happens with the rain because rain slows us down. We employ about 400 people at Gugulethu, which is the newest coal mine in the country and the plant is going to be washing about 200 000 t of coal a month.
We've already started exporting. The washed product is transported to Rietkuil Siding and from there, we rail it to Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBTC). This project was pledged as a