OVERVIEW Mining Miners
OVERVIEW Mining Miners are looking to renewable energy for power. Harmony Gold announced in June 2022 that it had secured a loan and signed an agreement to buy 30MW of solar photovoltaic energy. The company’s Free State assets will benefit from this, the first phase of Harmony’s renewable energy strategy which will see a further 137MW rolled out at other mines. Harmony has established an independent power producer for the construction of the three PV plants that will comprise the Free State plant. These plants will mitigate 65 000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in their first 12 months of operation; 1.3-terawatt hours of clean energy is expected to be delivered over their 20-year lifespan. The solar plant projects were jointly developed by Harmony, Energy Group (a specialist advisor and investor in industrial clean energy projects in Southern Africa), and BBEnergy (a South African engineering company that specialises in solving engineering problems in the energy and water fields). The project was funded by a project-finance debt solution from Rand Merchant Bank, a division of First Rand Bank Limited, and with the support of African Clean Energy Developments (ACED), equityfunded by African Infrastructure Investment Managers and Mahlako Energy Fund. The plants rank among the biggest solar PV plants for private offtake in South Africa to date and the first energy is expected to flow from the plants in March 2023. Many other South African miners are expected to follow Harmony’s lead. Gold mining Historically, the north-west part of the province was famous for gold, with Harmony Gold’s Bambanani mine forming an essential part of Welkom’s economy for many years. Bambanani is in the final stages of its life-of-mine but there are other areas where Harmony Gold is still extracting gold and investigating possible expansion programmes. The company is conducting an exploration programme to confirm the geological model of Target North and further define a potential block of well-mineralised Ventersdorp Contact Reef. Various challenges, not least of which was the Covid-19 pandemic, caused the reduced volume but this was outweighed by an increase in the recovered grade. AngloGold Ashanti sold most of its assets to Harmony Gold, two of which, Great Noligwa and SECTOR INSIGHT Gold miners went on strike for three months. Kopanang, are in the Free State. The complex includes one uranium plant, four gold plants and one sulphuric acid plant. These assets increased Harmony’s underground resource base in South Africa by nearly 40%. The mines include Tshipong and Phakisa (near Odendaalsrus), Virginia, Target (near Allanridge), Masimong (Riebeeckstad), Joel (near Theunissen) and Bambanani at Welkom. Some of the unions active at the gold mining operations of mining and metals processing group Sibanye-Stillwater were unable to reach an agreement on wage talks early in 2022, which led to a strike followed by a lock-out. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) had refused the wage offer but Solidarity accepted. Despite this, all workers (including those affiliated to the union UASA) were locked out. The threemonth stalemate ended in June with a three-year agreement brokered by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration. Sibanye-Stillwater is investigating a possible new FREE STATE BUSINESS 2023 30
geochemistry. Work completed to date has confirmed the Buvu target area as having potential for an unrecognised centre of epithermal hydrothermal alteration and mineralisation. OVERVIEW Harmony is exploring at Target North exploration North. site. Credit: Harmony project next to its existing Beatrix mine. Gold prices rose appreciably during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s Beatrix mine, with a life-of-mine projected to 2025, produced 196 698 ounces of gold in 2019. Beatrix also holds 26.97-million pounds of uranium resources. Gold mines in the Free State also supply a substantial portion of the total silver produced in the country, and large concentrations of uranium occurring in the gold-bearing conglomerates of the goldfields are extracted as a by-product. 8 Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited Other minerals The Lejweleputswa District Municipality in the north-west of the province is the site of considerable activity in the mining of industrial minerals, with six companies currently active. Matsopa Minerals, for example, runs a bentonite mine at Koppies between Heilbron and Vredefort. Sandstone and sand-mining operations are underway in Qwaqwa, Fouriesburg, Senekal, Sasolburg and Zastron. Limestone and calcrete occur in the western Free State where salt is also panned. Production is concentrated around the Florisbad salt pan, north-west of Bloemfontein. The mining sector makes up 11% of provincial GDP. A minerals ONLINE RESOURCES Minerals Council South Africa: www.mineralscouncil.org.za National Department of Mineral Resources and Energy: www.dmre.gov.za South African Mining Development Association: www.samda.co.za beneficiation strategy has been developed because this is a key area for potential growth. Petra Diamonds’ Koffiefontein mine is on the western edge of the province, about 80km from Kimberley. The mine is regarded as a low-grade deposit, but the diamonds produced are of high value. White stones of excellent quality are produced, and fancy pink diamonds are sometimes found. The Voorspoed mine of De Beers Consolidated Mines closed in 2018. De Beers, the South African government and the South African diamond-cutting industry have launched a project to encourage diamond beneficiators. Among the first companies involved are Thoko’s Diamonds, African Diamonds, Nungu Diamonds and Kwame Diamonds. Coal is mostly found in the northern part of the Free State. The Sigma-Mookraal mine is run by Sasol Mining and has the capacity to supply Sasol Infrachem in Sasolburg with two-million tons of coal per year. Seriti Resources has purchased the New Vaal Colliery from Anglo American. Together with two other mines in Mpumalanga Province, Seriti paid R2.3-billion. New Vaal is in the middle of a triangle of three towns that play an important part in industrial production: Vereeniging, Sasolburg and Vanderbijlpark. The mine employs more than 900 people and supplies about 15-million metric tons of coal to Eskom’s Lethabo power station annually. ■ 31 FREE STATE BUSINESS 2023
