MiningWeekly.com Audio Articles

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.

With disciplined policy reform, modernisation and partnerships, mining can elevate South Africa's economic development, industrial capability and social progress.

"We can unlock growth, skills and job creation, restore competitiveness, and secure a sustainable future for our industry and our country and demonstrate why mining matters," Minerals Council South Africa CEO Mzila Mthenjane emphasised at the 136th annual general meeting of Minerals Council South Africa on Wednesday, May 27.

"I'm proud to say that our sector has once again demonstrated resilience, discipline and the ability to deliver value in the face of a complex, volatile and evolving domestic and international environment.

"Internally, we strengthened governance, succession planning, and risk oversight. Quarterly risk reviews and structured board sessions improved alignment between advocacy priorities and emerging risks.

"Financial discipline remains robust, reinforcing our credibility. Our work is delivered through structured engagement with government, labour, communities, other economic sectors as well as domestic and global institutions.

"The maturity of these platforms reflects a shift from crisis response to future facing and structured collaboration, and forging partnerships for investment and growth," Mthenjane reported.

He described modernisation as the long-term lever for safe, healthy, productive mines that are globally competitive.

Through partnerships such as the Mandela Mining Precinct and Research Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, the Minerals Council was integrating mechanisation, digitalisation, and safety and health-enhancing technologies into operations.

"Modernisation in South Africa is people-centred and integral to competitiveness, resilience and sustainability - it must enhance safety, health, and productivity, deepen skills and improve efficiency simultaneously," he noted.

In 2025, the council intensified engagement on the amended Employment Equity Act and launched the Women in Mining Strategy 2025–2027, with research showing strong investment in skills development, reflecting commitment to workforce empowerment and long-term sustainability.

Transformation was, he said, deliberate, achievable and supported by strengthened skills pipelines, with sustainable transformation requiring policy coherence, collaboration and practical implementation mechanisms that recognised operational realities and past achievements.

A growing mining sector was, he pointed out, breaking through racial and gender barriers to employment, generating economic opportunities through enterprise and supplier develop and procurement opportunities that increase localisation, creating ownership models for employees and communities, enabling investment in critical infrastructure within communities and surrounding regions, and driving industrialisation through producing critical materials and minerals.

In this way, mining was diversifying the economy, stimulating broader skills development and harnessing the full potential of South Africa's capabilities.

While challenges remained, the council had entered 2026 on a stronger footing and with clear intent.

It was partnering with members to embed predictive safety and health systems to eliminate critical risks and continue our journey towards zero harm.

It was prioritising fhe strengthening inclusive transformation through skills pipelines that would meet evolving innovation and technology developments.

Securing pragmatic policy certainty under the Mineral Resources Development Bill, fiscal regime and other related legislation, would limit the burden of compliance and enhance the ease and ability to do the business of exploration and mining.

Restoring infrastructure reliability to unl...

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.

There is an urgent need for a one-stop shop for mineral right applications to coordinate and align all relevant regulations from other departments, to streamline and expedite approval processes.

This was pointed out explicitly at the 136th annual general meeting (AGM) of Minerals Council South Africa on Wednesday, May 27.

"The prevailing fragmented system results in delays and lost opportunities. A shared vision in the government of the importance of mining and the role it plays in our economy and society is essential," Minerals Council President Paul Dunne explained at the AGM covered by Mining Weekly.

The AGM came together during one of the most important moments in recent years for the South African mining sector with a fundamental sea change underway as the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) is further revising the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act , which was gazetted 22 years ago in April 2004.

South Africa had, Dunne said, a long history of robust engagements in policy developments with the DMPR, with moments of positive outcome, but also moments of disagreements ending up in court.

"These were unnecessary developments that damaged sentiment and perceptions of South Africa as a mining investment destination, and which, we trust, will never be repeated," Dunne stated.

Since 2004, South African mining had operated under the Mining Charter, which had positioned the mining sector as one of the country's most transformed economic clusters.

The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act marked a profound change in the way mining operated by vesting all unmined minerals in the custodianship of the State, ending private mineral ownership.

It ensured the participation of all South Africans who were previously excluded from full participation in one of South Africa's most important industrial clusters.

It ensured that companies looked beyond their mine gates to uplift communities through investments and partnerships, and to create fairer, more equitable and inclusive workplaces.

Around the time it was gazetted, women representation in mining, which is now at 21%, was around 3%, with mining companies meeting or exceeding economic empowerment ownership targets.

"It's unfortunate, however, that while the Act has delivered profound social change and transformation in the mining sector, it has fallen short of its aspiration to create an internationally competitive and efficient administrative and regulatory regime," Dunne reported.

Mining's contribution to GDP in 2025 was 6.2%, virtually flat compared with 6.3% when the Act was gazetted in 2004.

Simply put, South African mining was not – and had not been -- growing in any meaningful way for a multitude of reasons, including electricity shortages, above-inflation energy tariffs, logistics bottlenecks, regulatory uncertainty and poor administration of the law.

The past 22 years had been marred, Dunne noted, by disputes between the regulator, and the Minerals Council and its members, which were often resolved in court.

In 2013, a Bill to amend the Act spent more than 2 000 days in various proceedings before being withdrawn amid profound unhappiness about its proposed amendments.

"The negative impact of the prolonged regulatory uncertainty that those proposed amendments caused for the mining sector must not be understated. A repetition of drawn-out wrangling, because of an ill-considered Amendment Bill, which does not reflect our engagements with the DMPR, must be avoided at all costs," Dunne urged in reference to the latest Mineral Resources Development (MRD) Bill expected later this year.

Coupled with the uncertainty caused by the previous Bill, there had been the four versions of the Mining Charter, each setting rev...

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.

ASX-listed critical minerals explorer Lodestar Minerals has received firm commitments to raise $4.4-million through a placement of 2910million shares at a price of $0.0151 apiece, which will drive the company's exploration efforts across the Three Saints and Los Loros copper projects in Chile, the Virgin Mountain heavy rare earths project in the US and the Ned's Creek gold project in Western Australia.

The company's director are supporting the capital raising through a commitment of $305 700 in addition to the placement but on the same terms as the placement.

The placement, should shareholders approve it, will be led by Oakley Capital Partners, which upsized the initial placement following considerable demand from a range of existing Lodestar shareholders and other professional and sophisticated investors.

In Chile, Lodestar awaits assay results from a diamond drilling programme on the Three Saints project in the coming weeks, where extensive visible chalcopyrite (copper sulphide) was observed across multiple intervals from depths between 190 m to 600 m in the project's maiden drill hole. A second diamond drill hole was also completed to a depth of 611 m, which displayed encouraging signatures of potential increasing copper mineralisations at depth.

At Los Loros, Lodestar will soon start its first drill campaign targeting copper/molybdenum porphyry and high-grade epithermal gold.

At Virgin Mountain, Lodestar will be progressing a high-resolution airborne radiometric and magnetic survey over the project area to follow up on recent identification of surface expressions of xenotime-bearing rare earth element mineralisation - which is a lead indicator that a prospect is heavy rare earth-enriched.

Finally, Lodestar is working to deliver a maiden mineral resource estimate on Ned's Creek to enable future development options to be considered. The company is progressing a 10 000 m drill programme on site, with the resource estimate on track to be published later in the year.

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.

Emerging South African mining company Copper 360, which operates in the Northern Cape's Okiep copper district, on Tuesday, May 26 alerted its shareholders to its loss-narrowing financial performance in the 12 months to February 28.

The reduction in the basic loss per share is expected to be 36% to 43%, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange AltX-listed Copper 360 reported, ahead of the publication of its consolidated annual results.

The improvement in its financial performance, Copper 360 reported, was largely the result of the prior year's inclusion of a non-recurring R113-million solvent extraction plant impairment. Moreover, the improvement was achieved despite a R33.8-million rights offer loss.

Interestingly, the Stock Exchange News Service announcement follows an operational restructuring that opens the way for Copper 360's Rietberg copper mine to feed higher-grade underground ore into the company's Nababeep processing facility, something which used to take place as long ago as the 1970s but which was stopped in 1981 because of other deposits being closer and thus more economical.

Then, in August 2024, Copper 360's relook at production from Rietberg took place under the leadership of former CEO Jan Nelson, now deceased, resulting in the first on-ore blast at Rietberg taking place on January 31, 2025, which marked the restart of structured hard-rock mining to uplift operational economics and long-term sustainability.

Against the backdrop of Copper 360's multi-mine model embracing 12 previously operating mines and something like 60 identified copper prospects and mineralisations, Rietberg is now expected to lay a foundation for long-term profitability and value creation.

Copper 360's dozen opencast and underground mines, which are within 13 km of one another, span more than 19 000 ha. In addition to Rietberg, these include Jubilee, Homeep, Klondike, Wheal Julia North, Whyte's West, Koeëlkop, Hoogkraal and Waaihoek.

While the mines are geographically close, they differ in size, ore grade, stage of development, and operational status, with the multi-mine model offering a form of risk lowering that diversification normally provides.

When Copper 360 listed in 2023, it reported having a resource of two-million tonnes of copper worth R560-billion, with the 25 000 t at Rietberg valued at R1.4-billion.

Former mining majors that mined in the area in the old days included Gold Fields of South Africa and Newmont of North America.

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 contrast between China's weak steel production but robust iron-ore imports is continuing and is starting to look like a structural shift rather than a temporary dislocation.

China, which produces just over half of the world's steel, recorded output of 86.63-million tons in April, down 2.8% from the same month in 2025 and the weakest April figure since 2018.

For the first four months of the year steel production was 331.12-million tons, a drop of 4.1% from the same period last year.

However, iron-ore imports rose 8% in the first four months of the year to 418.6-million tons, according to official data.

April imports of the key steel raw material were 103.9-million tons, down 0.8% from March's 104.74-million but actually slightly higher on a per-day basis given April had one day less than March.

May imports are expected to stay relatively strong, with analysts at DBX Commodities estimating seaborne arrivals of 104.67-million tons.

Explaining the lacklustre steel production is relatively straightforward given the ongoing weakness in property construction and declining exports, with shipments dropping 9% in April from the same month last year to 9.5-million tons.

For the first four months of 2026, steel exports slid 9.7% to 34.2-million tons.

The strength in iron ore imports can be put down to both temporary and structural factors.

INVENTORIES BUILD

The main temporary factor is the rebuilding of inventories, with port stockpiles monitored by consultants SteelHome holding near record highs.

Inventories were 160.35-million tons in the week to May 22, up a touch from the prior week's 160.34-million and still close to the record high of 165.67-million reached in the week to March 20.

Inventories typically build toward the end of each year, peaking early in the new year before declining toward the middle of the year as steel production ramps up to meet construction demand.

Since the 2025 low of 131.05-million tons in late July, stockpiles have gained 22%.

The question for the market is whether inventories will exhibit their normal seasonal pattern and draw down heading into the northern summer, or whether soft steel output will keep them elevated compared to prior years.

The Iran war and the subsequent threat to fuel supplies in Asia from the ongoing effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz may also have encouraged Chinese steel mills and traders to import more iron-ore on the view that future supplies may be disrupted.

A lack of volatility in iron ore prices may also boost import sentiment, with Singapore Exchange contracts locked in a narrow band anchored around $105/t for the past ten months. The front-month contract ended at $109.09/t on Monday.

The longer-term factor driving iron ore imports is the gentle decline in China's domestic iron-ore output, which is exacerbated by weakening ore grades, which means that even the same volume of ore yields less iron content.

China's iron-ore output was 326.8-million tons in the first four months of the year, down 1% on the same period last year, according to MySteel data.

This follows a drop of 2.8% in 2025 to 983.- million tons from 1.04-billion in 2024.

China's domestic iron-ore contains around 20% to 30% iron, meaning it has to be upgraded to match imported grades of 60% to 65%, a process that is costly and energy-intensive.

It's likely that China's domestic iron-ore will continue to decline, meaning that imports will make up a larger share, assuming steel output remains largely steady.