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.

Indian factories, smelters and households are being hit by blackouts and rising energy costs as the impact of plunging coal stockpiles at the country's power stations ripples through the economy.

The weakest monsoon since 2015 has curbed hydropower output, while hotter-than-normal weather has buoyed demand for air conditioning and farm irrigation. That's seen coal-fired power stations, which supply about two-thirds of India's electricity, rapidly burn through their inventories.

Smaller factories, farmers and households are facing power cuts as demand outweighs supply on the grid. Meanwhile, large industrial customers - in metals smelting, chemicals and paper — can't get enough fuel to produce electricity themselves due to State-owned miner Coal India prioritizing deliveries to grid-connected generators.

Small steel mills in the central state of Chhattisgarh are facing outages of 10 to 12 hours a day, forcing plants to reduce output, said Manish Dhuppad, general secretary at the Chhattisgarh Mini Steel Plant Association.

Mills require an "uninterrupted supply of power," he said. "Say we have hot metal inside the furnace and just before we are able to take it out, the power supply goes. By the time it comes back, the material has solidified and we need to melt it again."

The power shortage highlights the increasing role that extreme weather is having on India's economy, with the weak monsoon driven by a record El Niño. It also shows how the country's continued reliance on fossil fuels is limiting its ability to respond to a changing climate.

Feedstock supplies at almost half of India's coal-fired plants had fallen to less than a quarter of required levels as of Oct. 10, according to the power ministry. A late burst of monsoon rainfall last month in coal-mining regions in the east of the country exacerbated the shortages, crimping production and also hampering rail transport of the fuel.

In the northern state of Punjab, homes and industries are enduring lengthy blackouts.

Badish Jindal, who runs a steel wire plant in Ludhiana, an industrial city in the state, said frequent power cuts of three to four hours had resulted in higher energy costs, as his factory needed to shift to expensive back-up generators.

"The power cuts are unscheduled," he said. "That makes it difficult to plan our operations and deliveries and affects product quality. The sudden stoppage and restart of machines as the power supply goes and comes back also raises the risks of accidents."

The country's electricity grid has faced an average shortfall of nearly 4 GW a day in the first 10 days of October, data from Grid Controller of India show. That's enough to power about two-million rural Indian households, according to Bloomberg calculations.

The policy to favor grid-connected power stations has left companies that generate their own coal-fired electricity at a major disadvantage, said Rajiv Agarwal, secretary general of the Indian Captive Power Producers Association, which represents the big industrial users.

They are having to pay high prices at Coal India auctions, and buy expensive power from the grid, he said. The firms are also having to wait months for rail transport, so those with limited operating capital are being forced to cut output, he said.

Average premiums at Coal India spot sales in September jumped to 94% over the base price, compared with a 59% difference in August. Two of the company's subsidiaries — Northern Coalfields and South Eastern Coalfields — charged more than a 200% premium at auctions last month, data from the miner show.

Coal India didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

For those getting their power from the grid, bills have gone up in most Indian states over the past few years. That's ...

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.

South Africa remains one of the world's premier mining jurisdictions, Anglo American has spelt out emphatically, amid itself investing R11.2-billlion in the ultra-high dense media separation iron-ore project at Sishen, in South Africa's Northern Cape.

"We have other investments in terms of innovation and technology. We've made commitments in terms of exploration investment in South Africa, and despite the challenges, despite the volatility, despite the uncertainty, the opportunity remains huge for us," Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad commented during last week's discussion with Joburg Indaba chairperson Bernard Swanepoel.

"Whilst South Africa's mineral endowment remains one of the greatest strengths of South Africa, attracting investment increasingly depends on broader conditions that support competitiveness and project development," Wanblad explained.

Anglo is part of the Business for South Africa platform developed in terms of the Government-Business Partnership for Growth and Jobs, which is setting up conditions to allow South Africa to grow economically and to provide long-term and sustainable jobs for South Africa's people.

Wanblad expressed delight that the Government-Business Partnership's advance into phase three had embedded mining as a fundamental pillar of identifiable growth within South Africa, "and that's hugely exciting for all of us".

The partnership is targeting 3% growth and the creation of a million jobs by 2030.

Wanblad pointed out that the "unparalleled mining expertise" of South Africans was evidenced by the large number of South Africans in senior mining roles the world over.

Within South Africa itself, he said, were world-class engineering capabilities, sophisticated financial markets and well-established institutions, which provided a solid foundation for what should be one of the world's most globally competitive mining sectors.

But three key areas had to be accelerated to turn this into investable and executable project development.

"The first of these areas is that we have to continue to address administrative complexity that just too often delays investments or creates unpredictability as far as investors are concerned.

"These need an efficient and harmonised regulatory environment and this is not only permitting that I'm talking about. A crucial part of this is the successful implementation of our long-awaited modern cadastral system, which should improve transparency, strengthen investor confidence and the combination of those should unlock exploration and therefore unlock project development, which is clearly the genesis of every new mine," Wanblad explained.

Secondly, South Africa must continue to build on its "hugely encouraging and measurably good progress" in rail and logistics reform, and create highly reliable freight and port systems.

"We have made superb progress there, but undeniably still some ways to go," Wanblad pointed out.

The third area was strengthening South Africa's energy security, where nobody would suggest that South Africa had not made phenomenal progress.

To this effort, Anglo's Envusa energy partnership with EDF Power Solutions contributes 520 MW of renewable energy that has been connected – and there is more to come, Wanblad reported.

In addition, South Africa's removal from the grey list and South Africa's improved sovereign credit ratings had helped to strengthen investor confidence and investment appeal.

"The next challenge that I think we really do have to get our heads around is this issue of security, safety, corruption, et cetera. I know that's one of the benchmark pillars of this partnership with government, and we are certainly very encouraged by all of this progress, but it's going to take an enormous amount of effort and sig...

Mining Weekly Editor Martin Creamer talks about the opportunities that green iron-ore has for South Africa; South Africa’s alluvial diamond sector; and the urgency in tackling climate change challenge.

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.

It must be appreciated that the current high price of fuel is a function of the war in the Middle East and South Africans must work together in confronting the major impact that this high price is having on the South African economy, Mineral Resources and Petroleum Minister Gwede Mantashe urged during the final speech on the final day of this week's vibrant Joburg Indaba.

Mantashe expressed the wish to address the high fuel price issue amid the South African government being blamed for something that the South African government had not brought about. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Regarding the dozen WhatsApp group discussions in which he partakes daily, he said: "I go to everyone, every day, and people will blame government for the price of fuel, and I was saying to members of my party, don't own something that's not yours.

"We must appreciate that the price of fuel is a function of the war in the Middle East, and that is not a local war. The Strait of Hormuz happens to be located there, and every time a barrel of oil costs more than $100, you must know that we're going to see that in the pump," Mantashe pointed out at the Joburg Indaba event covered by Mining Weekly.

When appealing to the government to soften the fuel price blow, what also had to be appreciated was the impact of the price of oil on the rand-dollar exchange rate.

Mantashe advocated requesting the government to cushion the fuel price and let it be known that this had been under way since the Russia/Ukraine conflict and also during the current Middle East war. But he urged that when doing so, price cushioning should not be taken as an entitlement but something that the State must do in sympathy with citizens, "and the citizens must appreciate that".

"Once it becomes entitlement, Bernard," a reference to Bernard Swanepoel, the chair of the Joburg Indaba event, "we're walking on a very dangerous route, because everything becomes a right.

"We must remember that if we take money from the fiscus to cushion the price of petroleum, there's something that we are going to give up, because for every rand you spend on something else, it's in exchange for something else you could have spent it on, and our people must appreciate that very well, and appreciate that it is a disaster facing the country and that we must work together in confronting it.

"I must go and basically kneel in front of the Minister of Finance and beg him, 'but listen, you can tamper with the fuel levy, you can tamper with that, please let's cushion it' – a relatively difficult Minister, by the way.

"I do go to him and tell him listen, brother of mine – and I become very soft – let's put some money aside, but when I do that, I don't do that because people are entitled to it.

"I do it because I understand that it's contributing to the rising cost of living, and it's our responsibility to explain to our people that it is something out of our control. We are intervening in this issue that's a disaster facing us," Mantashe explained.

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 European Commission has chosen 46 strategic raw material projects to benefit from faster permitting and help in bidding for public and private funding, as the bloc races to diversify supply chains and reduce reliance on China, it said on Friday.

The EU, along with other major Western economies, is heavily dependent on China for critical minerals and components such as batteries and rare earths used in the defence, aerospace, automotive and renewable energy sectors.

Beijing has increasingly used those dependencies as a trade lever over the last two years, adding urgency to EU efforts to secure supplies and explore a joint stockpile of key raw materials.

Progress on the projects picked last year has been slow and some have struggled to move forward. The Commission said it had already mobilised more than €2-billion ($2.24-billion) in public funding, but developers warned in August that more projects could fail without urgent funding.

The Commission hopes prioritising projects will help the bloc meet targets set out in its 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act, under which the EU aims to mine 10%, process 40% and recycle 25% of its annual needs by 2030.

The projects are spread across 16 EU countries and cover 15 of the EU's list of 17 strategic raw materials including copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite, rare earths, magnesium and tungsten.

"The 46 new projects are expected to require around €21.1-billion ($23.7-billion) in capital investment, mobilised from a combination of public and private sources," the Commission said.

Notable projects include the Zinnwald Lithium project in Germany, the Skouries mine in Greece, Arctial's planned aluminium smelter in Finland and the Viscaria copper project in Sweden, as well as projects backed by major European industrial groups including Umicore, Aurubis and Leonardo.

Strategic projects do not automatically receive EU funding. Instead, the Commission said it "facilitates access" to EU funding and helps connect project developers with lenders.

The latest set of projects follow 60 that were announced last year, including 13 outside the EU in countries such as Brazil, Greenland and Kazakhstan.