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Interest in green ammonia supply has recently surged beyond expectation, Hive Hydrogen South Africa reported on Friday, November 13.

Hive Hydrogen is developing the Coega green ammonia project at the deep-water Port of Ngqura in South Africa's Nelson Mandela Bay.

Driving the burgeoning demand outlook for green ammonia are the increased cost of fossil fuel-derived ammonia, the growing concerns over security of traditional supply chains, as well as hefty, looming carbon taxes.

Hive Hydrogen's studies pointed to imported ammonia supply shortages for Europe and the Far East increasing substantially further.

Amid the fulfilment of planned ammonia bunkering and coal substitution projects, it is calculated that this year's three- to four-million tonnes is poised to be majorly multiplied to 75-million-plus tonnes by 2032.

The supply shortage is large enough for 75 more projects of the size of Hive Hydrogen's Coega green ammonia project to be developed

Moreover, this shortage would be further compounded by the:

decommissioning of dirty and ageing 'grey' fossil-fuel derived ammonia production plants; andthe cost and lifespan uncertainties hanging over blue ammonia projects against the backdrop of unproven carbon capture technology, limited storage capacities, volatile gas prices, and doubts over medium to long term viability.

In South Africa itself, ammonia production shortages will be faced as early as 2028 when gas supplied from Mozambique runs out. As a consequence, higher cost ammonia imports will thus be needed to supply this region's large fertiliser and mining explosives industries.

"Green ammonia is seen as the most credible and viable solution to replace dirty grey ammonia needed to manufacture fertilisers and mining explosives and also to become the maritime clean fuel of the future," Hive Energy CEO and Hive Hydrogen South Africa GM Colin Loubser emphasised in a media release to Mining Weekly.

"We've seen more and wider interest in our project in the period since the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in September than in the previous two years. This has been largely driven by a wider understanding of the strategic and growing importance of a reliable green ammonia supply, changing market forces and maturing clean energy technologies.

"The South African government, led by a committed and very determined Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and supported strongly by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition as well as the 'Three Capes' provincial governments, has been tirelessly engaged in catalysing the green hydrogen industry in South Africa, focussing on liberalising energy generation, creating a low-carbon framework to enable responsible but effective re-industrialisation and ensuring electricity transmission capacity and renewable power generation will be accessible and cost reflective," Loubser added.

Chaired by former Eskom CEO and former Standard Bank chair Thulani Gcabashe, Hive Hydrogen has been working on large-scale green hydrogen and green ammonia development since 2019.

In September, the project was advanced through the awarding of a $9-million front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the pioneering $5.8-billion Coega green hydrogen ammonia project, which has its own grid-connected large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic renewable energy plants totalling 2 930 MW .

The commencement of FEED allows Hive Hydrogen and Técnicas Reunidas to work closely with technology providers, infrastructure partners, government stakeholders, financiers, export credit agencies, and prospective offtakes as the molecule portion progresses towards implementation. The multifaceted initiative is seen as being on the way to creating more than 20 000 employment opportunities

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Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer discusses the Mponeng Gold Mine delivering a strong quarter for Harmony; the belief that a new chapter can be created for the natural diamond business; and Valterra Platinum's industry-relevant platinum jewellery skills.

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.

Japanese chemicals and materials company Asahi Kasei Corporation, together with Dutch software and blockchain company Circularise and Japanese platinum group metals (PGM) refiner Furuya Metal, have launched a joint demonstration project to establish traceability for precious metals used in chlor-alkali electrolysis electrodes.

In particular, the companies are evaluating the issuance of digital product passports for precious metals such as iridium and ruthenium.

The initiative aims to digitally track the origin, recovery, refining and reuse of critical precious metals, to support both circular resource use and greater supply chain transparency.

Iridium and ruthenium are essential materials for electrodes in chlor-alkali electrolysis as well as semiconductors, electronics and advanced chemical applications. Demand for these commodities is poised to increase as hydrogen production technologies such as proton exchange membrane electrolysers continue to scale globally.

According to the International Platinum Group Metals Association, global annual primary iridium production is estimated at only about seven tons, while yearly ruthenium supply is estimated at about 30 t.

Both are among the world's most supply-constrained critical metals, with production concentrated in a small number of mining regions and largely obtained as a by-product of platinum extraction.

This supply-demand imbalance has contributed to pronounced price volatility and heightened focus on recycling and circular resource management across industries.

"While companies can sometimes identify where end-of-life materials are collected and where metals are refined, tracking the materials throughout intermediate processing, refining, and subsequent reuse remains challenging. Without trusted traceability mechanisms, verifying recycled content and demonstrating circularity at scale can be difficult. Digital product passports offer a way to overcome this challenge," explains Asahi Kasei.

The demonstration project builds on a prior metal recycling initiative launched by Asahi Kasei and Circularise in 2025 to recover and recycle precious metals from end-of-life chlor-alkali electrolysis cells and electrodes. That collaboration marked an important step toward creating a circular ecosystem for valuable metals within the chlor-alkali industry.

By adding digital traceability and data-sharing capabilities, the new demonstration seeks to make the entire lifecycle of recycled precious metals visible, from recovery through reintegration into newly manufactured electrodes.

Circularise has spent nearly a decade developing supply chain traceability and secure data-sharing solutions for global industries including chemicals and battery materials. Between February and September 2025, Asahi Kasei and Circularise conducted an initial proof of concept using a simulated recycling scenario. The results showed that the Circularise platform could securely manage data on precious metals recovered from end-of-life electrodes and reused in new products.

Building on these findings, the partners are now moving into a real-world demonstration with Furuya Metal.

The project will first focus on establishing traceability across the recycling chain, from the collection of spent electrodes through precious metal extraction, refining, and the production of recycled metal. It will then extend traceability downstream by linking material data to the manufacture of new electrodes, enabling the evaluation of digital product passports.

"For Asahi Kasei, the sustainable utilisation of precious metal resources is a critical priority. Building a truly circular system requires close collaboration among companies involved in collection, refining, and manufacturing.

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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.

Foreign investors in South Africa typically encounter fewer ownership restrictions than in many resource-rich jurisdictions, multinational corporate law firm Baker McKenzie states in its 192-page report covering 20 countries.

Highlighted is that South Africa's policy environment is increasingly supportive of private-sector participation.

Pointed out, too, is that South Africa's objective is not simply to attract capital into projects, but to ensure that investment contributes to domestic manufacturing, employment and supply-chain development.

The report acknowledges South Africa as a major producer of platinum group metals, manganese, chrome and vanadium, with its critical-minerals policy reflecting a broader effort to capture greater value from its resource base rather than remaining a supplier of raw materials alone.

"Government's focus increasingly centres on improving the economics of downstream investment, supporting exploration, strengthening industrial infrastructure and encouraging greater value addition within South Africa and the broader Southern African region," Johannesburg-based Baker McKenzie partners Ryan Alho and Lydia Shadrach-Razzino state in the seven pages on South Africa, whose approach to decarbonisation is seen as being "generally pragmatic".

"South Africa views itself as a potential regional processing and manufacturing hub capable of leveraging mineral resources across the broader Southern African region.

"In practice, however, the success of these ambitions will depend on competitiveness. Reliable electricity supply, efficient logistics infrastructure, affordable industrial power and a stable regulatory environment will ultimately determine whether downstream processing investments are commercially viable.

"South Africa remains one of the deepest and most sophisticated energy and infrastructure markets on the continent. Demand for new generation, storage, transmission, logistics and water infrastructure remains substantial, and the policy environment is increasingly supportive of private-sector participation. The opportunity is therefore relatively clear. The principal challenge is execution.

"The pace at which transmission networks are expanded, electricity markets are liberalised and ageing infrastructure is renewed will ultimately determine whether projected investment opportunities are translated into realised returns," Alho and Shadrach-Razzino conclude in the document released to Mining Weekly.

On Angola, the only other African country to be given exposure, the Baker McKenzie document reports that Anglo's regulatory reforms focus on removing practical barriers to investment and creating clearer routes for private-sector participation.

Angola's mining policy is described as being geared towards turning resources such as copper, cobalt, lithium, rare earths, niobium, manganese, phosphates, iron and gold into commercial production rather than holding them as strategic reserves.

"The approach is already visible in offtake arrangements, with the first year of Tetelo copper production contracted to Glencore. Alongside this upstream push, Angola is

promoting domestic processing, including diamond polishing, steel production and the use of phosphates and dolomitic limestone in agriculture," Miranda Alliance partners João Leite, Lília Tomé de Azevedo and Renato Guerra de Almeida report.

Policy frameworks across all major global jurisdictions are said to be changing rapidly, with strongest opportunities arising not where a single incentive is generous, but where multiple policy objectives — such as energy security, industrial development, critical minerals and decarbonisation — reinforce one another, creating durable and overlapping support for the same project or sector.

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 Western rare earths sector is entering a phase in which the focus is shifting from identifying alternative resources to establishing a dependable, commercially viable supply chain, says NYSE-listed Rare Earths Americas, which is positioning its Brazilian and US exploration portfolio to address a growing supply chain gap, particularly for heavy rare earths.

CEO Don Swartz tells Mining Weekly that this transition will require more than new discoveries; it will depend on the interaction of geology, metallurgy, permitting, financing, processing capacity and market development of rare earths.

"The broader challenge for the industry is to ensure that upstream development keeps pace with investment in separation and manufacturing. Without a dependable supply of suitable feedstock, the expansion of downstream capacity alone will not deliver meaningful supply chain resilience," he explains.

Ultimately, the success of Western rare earth diversification will depend on connecting viable mineral resources with the specialised processors, manufacturers and customers needed to turn them into usable products.

"Brazil could be an important part of that equation, but converting geological potential into reliable commercial supply will remain the decisive test," Swartz stresses.

Swartz believes Brazil's growing prominence reflects the strategic importance of these considerations. "Its geological endowment, particularly its ionic adsorption clay systems, offers potential opportunities to diversify heavy rare earth supply, while recent investment and policy developments point towards a greater role in downstream value creation," Swartz states.

COST-EFFECTIVE PATHWAY

Brazil is undoubtedly emerging as one of the most strategically important rare earths jurisdictions globally outside of China as investment in Western processing and magnet manufacturing accelerates.

Brazil's ionic clay deposits share characteristics with the deposits that have historically supplied a material portion of the heavy rare earths from southern China and Myanmar.

"In recognising the strategic importance of these resources, Brazil has enacted a new national critical minerals policy that establishes mechanisms to encourage domestic processing, financing and higher-value industrial activity.

"Through implementation and permitting will still matter, the direction is clear: Brazil wants to move further downstream and build a more integrated and competitive rare earths industry," Swartz states.

For Rare Earths Americas, the opportunity lies not only in discovery of new massive resources but in identifying deposits that can be processed cost-effectively with lower impurities and high metallurgical performance.

Swartz says equally important is the recoverable rare earths basket, citing dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium as elements that can drive a very different economic and strategic profile from a deposit dominated by lower-value elements.

The company emphasises an important factor in rare earths development being the availability of proven processing technology to convert resources into products that downstream customers can readily consume.

To this end, monazite-bearing and ionic adsorption clay deposits have established processing precedents, which provide a well-understood starting point for exploration and development.

"The West does not need every miner to integrate all the way through to magnet production. Rather, it needs a functioning supply chain where miners provide reliable feedstock to specialised separators, metal producers and magnet manufacturers," Swartz notes.

FEEDSTOCK ISSUE

Swartz confirms there has been major progress in processing, separation and magnet manufacturing outside China, supported by both governm...