Botswana has proven to be a success in Africa in terms of Mineral beneficiation as they have successfully implemented it in the diamond industry. Challenges have been pointed out with regards to beneficiation of minerals in SA, and these include:
- Pricing of our electricity is too high (Availability of Energy).
- Infrastructure.
- Skills.
- Efficient labour market.
- Coherent and alignment of policies, and
- Strong and efficient state.
I believe we have most of these issues covered, which are skills, and slowly the energy sector as there have been progress in renewable energy, such as the Hydrogen/Platinum fuel cells of which Implats and Anglo America have made huge strides in this aspect, and also the possibility of expanding in Nuclear energy, even though there are controversies that come with this. All that is left is the coordination and execution of the idea, provided that stakeholders involved in this are of the same mindset.
Usually, each stakeholder has at least one competitor; advertising, inviting, and communicating with those groups could shake, or motivates the locals to update and adjust their mindset, as a result of fear-factor toward future.
Thank you Miss Faranack Nader Benz. Can you please elaborate as to how advertising, inviting and communicating with such groups could motivate the locals to adjust their mindset, because I believe the local government is in fact driving the issue of mineral beneficiation, and want to see it happen in full scale in the near future.
Dear Sandile,
From a skills perspective point-of-view, continuous process mineralogical studies need to undertaken so as to understand the processing behaviour of the ore. The necessary plant parameters can then be changed according to the ore characteristics. This is particularly true for precious metal ores (i.e. platinum or gold). Platinum ores from the Bushveld Complex are complex and on-going studies into the processing behaviour of these offers insights into increasing the recovery of platinum-group elements.
Ideally the process mineralogical studies would need to be based in-house (this is however, impractical for junior miners). In most instances the mines only consult when there are major problems at the plant and only as a last resort on account of the high costs associated with such studies undertaken by industry consultants.
The type of mining method also influences mineral beneficiation .i.e. mechanised vs. conventional methods and the pros and cons of each mining method.
I hope this helps in at least opening dialogue from my perspective.
