Value creation, exploration, Harmony Gold projects make headlines
welcome to Second sake the show that focuses on the issues behind the news mining weekly editor Martin ker joins me today to unpack the latest news in the mining industry welcome Martin thanks now baric revealed its first quarter results where Discovery and development were punted as the true drivers of value Creation in mining yes and Discovery and development are not just words with baric they are implemented and this has taken place since you know Dr Mark Bristo was U head of rang gold resources he used exploration to actually make sure that his company could get assets moving in a lowcost and responsible way I think because you don’t want to have merges and Acquisitions and then end up with chasing all sorts of High grades to try and pay off the debt so everywhere he’s gone you’ll see that there is an expiration involvement and a platform that is built on and I think that’s what major companies should do it also brings them very close to the communities very close to the governments and you can see that barck also rates mine closure very highly so you know the start of mining with the Discovery and development it rates very highly but then mine closure if you see what they’re doing to one of the closing gold mines in Tanzania it’s exemplary because you’ve got this mine closing we’ve seen mines close here over the years and you end up with ghost towns instead of this happening there’s a public private activity and with this gold mine they found it opportune to put in an Air Terminal so You’ got the Air Terminal there the government has then brought in a special economic zone they’re bringing in a training academy you know not just for mining but finance and computers and all the activities of the world including safety as well and there’ll be many supervisors involved there but what really stunned me was that when they do the calculations this new operation that they envisaging there they believe can generate 3,000 jobs a year sustainably now that is the sort of thing that we need in South Africa you know so with mind closure it can become a big positive situation and we saw them turn it into a positive situation in Marley as well so from the Cradle to the Grave they really focus very well it’s exemplary I think now South Africa struggling economy can also benefit from exploration getting going at PACE yes you know we said sit here talking about exploration we know that our mining industry is shrinking it has shrunk quite alarmingly we know that we rely heavily on mining for exports and from those exports you know we generate uh an incoming foreign exchange that makes sure our Rand can be firmed up so it’s a hugely important industry which you should not allow to shrink the way you don’t allow to shrink is to make sure you work well on exploration Discovery and development now a lot of that Discovery has been done so they need to get access to that they also need to get the cadaster working the cadaster is the system that people go into to see what is available it is taking them very long to get this going I believe that just like when we had problems with the esum uh energy you suddenly had a public Private Structure set up dealing with that focusing on that and we could see how it helped it Logistics as well rail Logistics very bad activities on the coal line and on the IR or line suddenly you saw this public Private Structure set up and people just reported things are improving what we need now is a public Private Structure to get this exploration going in the right way I know that on Wednesday you know they they launched a a fund for exploration but that fund fund is is heavily geared towards ensuring that previously disadvantaged uh South Africans actually get into the exploration business as 51% shelers so okay that maybe takes care of past injustices past problems and we see that they will be monitoring that on a fairly good basis I hope they’re very transparent about it so we can see what’s going on there but over and above this need this public Private Structure to really focus on getting the big investment in and that is so important for us so important for our grandkids in the future because we’ve got to make sure that this mining industry doesn’t shrink lastly how many gold South African uh gold projects are on track and it’s Australian copper projects also have big developments yes you know the gold mining companies are benefiting from a fantastic gold price you know increased 15% last year it’s increased 15% so far this year it is now seen as the you know Haven when there’s problems in the world huge confidence in mining so it’s a wonderful time for harmony gold it’s a wonderful time for goldfields and all the other gold miners that that we’ve got here sabna but you can see that that with um Harmony they’ve inherited Minds that giving that give them a much higher grade now so it’s put them into to a higher grade category and then also they’ve got extensions going on and that’s so important as we talk about exploration you also need these expansions going on and we can see them at M ksong you know that’s well placed mine Waste Solutions on Surface well placed and then Preparatory work being done at imping so that’s fantastic that we’ve got these activities that expand gold mining at this time in South Africa and this is a way of doing it that gets you a return very very fast and then also on the long in the longer term you know to get into copper virtually all gold mining companies seem to want to get into copper and they’ve got the Eva project in Australia which they are moving forward well but importantly the government there has given it a status of a priority project so that’ll be very good for for harmony as well thanks for speaking with us M great pleasure session that’s it for today join us again next next week for more news analysis on the local and Global mining Industries pleas subscribe to Crea media’s engineering news and Mining weekly please email 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Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer discusses Barrick’s recently revealed first quarter results where discovery and development were punted as the true drivers of value creation in mining; South Africa’s struggling economy, which could benefit relatively quickly from getting exploration going at pace; and Harmony Gold’s key South African gold projects and its Australian copper project.
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