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Chromium/Platinum Group Metals

NEWS RELEASE: Ivanhoe Mines and Ivanplats challenge Globe & Mail story about Platreef mine development project in South Africa (January 12, 2015)

Attention:

– Paul Waldie, Editor, Report on Business, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Canada
– Geoffrey York, Africa correspondent, The Globe and Mail

The cover story published in The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business on January 10 (Showdown in South Africa) is flawed by serious failures of what is purported to be standards-based journalism.

The story is blighted by false allegations and misrepresentations, and gratuitous exaggerations. One inevitable result is that parts of the story serve as a soapbox for a coterie of dedicated critics, some of whose self-serving motivations curiously are ignored. But, despite its 3,000-word length, the story fails to present the view of even one ordinary citizen from among the tens of thousands who comprise the overwhelming majority in the neighbouring communities who do support the development of the Platreef mining project by Ivanplats (Pty) Ltd., a subsidiary of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. That would have required diligence and determination. It begs the pertinent question: Why?

The current economic potential of Ivanhoe’s Platreef world-scale mineral discoveries, and the innovative comprehensiveness of the project’s broad-based black economic empowerment structure, are without peer in South Africa. One essential feature is that the combined population of approximately 150,000 people in the communities surrounding the planned mine development now effectively share a 20% ownership of the Platreef Project through a collective trust.

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Patent office decision may help KWG to cut chromite production costs in half – by Jamie Smith (tbnewswatch.com – January 13, 2015)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/default.aspx

THUNDER BAY — Mining is an expensive industry. Just ask KWG Resources, which received good news from the U.S. Patent Office’s International Searching Authority earlier this month. The office found that KWG’s process for using natural gas and an accelerant, rather than a standard electric arc furnace, to process chromite is a novel one.

Vice-president of exploration and development Moe Lavigne said the idea could cut costs by more than half for its proposed operation. It could also have the potential to license the process to mines around the world but it hasn’t had the chance to get the process out of the lab yet.

“We haven’t tested it on chromites from around the world yet but we suspect that it’ll be applicable to any chromite deposit on the planet,” he said. Typically an electric furnace needs to burn at around 1,700 C in order to separate chromite, made of chromium, iron and oxygen. KWG’s process could do the same using natural gas at 1,200 C. That saves energy costs but also equipment costs by burning at a lower temperature.

“At 1,700 C just about everything melts,” Lavigne said. The footprint for the plant is also about a quarter of the size of an electric furnace like the one proposed by once KWG senior partner Cliffs Natural Resources. Electricity prices means a typical plant would likely be built in Quebec or Manitoba where prices are cheaper but natural gas is the same price across the country.

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Ivanhoe Mines challenges media report alleging coercive tactics in S Africa – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – January 12, 2015)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – South Africa-focused project development Ivanhoe Mines on Monday lashed out at journalists at one of Canada’s premier national newspapers for publishing a story on Friday alleging the company used illegal coercive tactics to obtain the necessary permits for its Platreef polymetallic mine, near Mokopane, on the northern limb of the country’s mineral-rich Bushveld Complex.

Senior management of TSX-listed Ivanhoe and its subsidiary, Ivanplats, published an open letter challenging The Globe and Mail’s editor of the Report on Business Paul Waldie and Africa correspondent Geoffrey York, charging the cover story was “blighted by false allegations and misrepresentations, and gratuitous exaggerations”.

Among the examples cited in the article, two men, including an official from Ivanhoe, told an 82-year-old villager to give up her land or stand to lose her monthly pension of about $450/m. In the open letter, the companies point out that they were never given an opportunity by The Globe to comment on this specific allegation before it was published.

The letter also stated: “For the record, the company now does challenge and deny the allegation presented by The Globe concerning use of what would be an unacceptable negotiating tactic. It already is a matter of record that well known Platreef critics previously have made similar allegations of pressure tactics as a ploy against other business entities, which also have been unfounded.”

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Robert Friedland’s mining showdown in South Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 10, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

MOKOPANE, SOUTH AFRICA — The two men took the cash from an envelope, counted it carefully and spread it on the table in front of Raesetsa Makgabo in her village home. It was exactly 5,250 South African rand (about $450 U.S.).

She says she remembers vividly what the men said next: They told her to take the money and allow the Canadian mining company to begin drilling on her maize fields – or lose her monthly pension.

Illiterate and unable to read the document in front of her, but fearful of losing the $120 monthly pension that was her main income, the 82-year-old villager took the pen and marked the agreement with a humble X beside her name. The two men, including an official from Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., signed the document dated May 10, 2011. Then the drilling began.

Ivanhoe’s $1.7-billion project, forecast to become the world’s biggest new platinum mine, is crucial to the fate of the Vancouver-based company – and to thousands of impoverished villagers near the site.

Ivanhoe says its Platreef mine will provide 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, along with a minority ownership stake for 150,000 residents and employees under South Africa’s black-empowerment rules.

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Platreef PFS underpins ‘excellent’ economics – Ivanhoe – by Natasha Odendaal (Mining Weekly.com – January 8, 2015)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The prefeasibility study (PFS) of TSX-listed Ivanhoe Mines’ Platreef project had demonstrated the robust nature of the latest major new underground, mechanised platinum mine, near Mokopane, in Limpopo, executive chairperson Robert Friedland said on Thursday.

Ivanhoe aimed to develop the Platreef platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold, nickel and copper mine in three phases, with an initial production rate of four-million tonnes a year to establish an operating platform to support future expansions.

The latest study confirmed the “excellent” economics and technical viability of the low-cost operation, Friedland said of the mine that would eventually expand production to eight-million tonnes a year, before reaching a steady-state 12-million-tonne-a-year operation in the third phase.

The PFS – an important milestone in Ivanhoe’s planned transformation of the Platreef discovery into one of the pre-eminent South African platinum-group metals producers – covered the first phase of development, including the construction of an underground mine, concentrator and other associated infrastructure to support initial concentrate production by 2019.

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Chrome, platinum prices likely to recover – Tharisa – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – December 15, 2014)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The price of chrome concentrate and the basket price of platinum group metals should recover in 2015, which could mean fourth-quarter profit for the JSE-listed Tharisa Minerals should it achieve its number-one priority of steady state production.

Tharisa CEO Phoevos Pouroulis told Mining Weekly Online in an interview on Monday that price recovery plus steady state production growth should see the company emerge from the red and go into the black before this time next year.

The Cyprus-domiciled company’s gross margin on platinum group metals was 24% in the 12 months to September 30 and 10% on chrome concentrates because of the chrome price drop over the last year. “The fact that we’re a low-cost producer is the key differentiator,” Pouroulis commented to Mining Weekly Online.

The company has a 23-year-life openpit from which it coproduces platinum group metals and chrome concentrate, enabling to split mining and overhead costs and put itself into the lowest cost quartile for platinum and chrome concentrate production at steady state levels.

“Generally, we foresee an increase in commodity prices coupled to a weaker exchange rate,” Pouroulis said. Also noted was China’s stocks of chrome concentrates being at their lowest in years, which pointed to the likelihood of restocking in 2015.

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Zimbabwe, a place of rewards and sanctions – by Memory Mataranyika (Miningmx.com – December 9, 2014)

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – MINING companies in Zimbabwe have described the current year as a period of negative and positive halves.

On the one hand, the Zimbabwean government saved its miners from total collapse under the heavy saddle of fiscal demands and on the other, it softened demands that platinum miners speedily build a base metals refinery inside the country.

The mining sector in Zimbabwe has continued to be a major mainstay of the country’s economy with mineral exports accounting for 52% of the country’s total exports worth $2.4bn as of end-October, 2014.

The major international mining companies all have a presence in Zimbabwe, but their growth plans and expansion programs appeared to falter under the weight of a difficult operating environment in the country, with softer commodity prices also contributing to this.

It has mostly been the gold mines – Blanket, owned by Caledonia and Freda Rebecca owned by Mwana Africa – that have outlined and acted on their expansion plans. Mwana Africa is additionally raising funds to re-open its nickel refinery operation.

“Capital injections by mining houses, rebound in international gold prices as well as production rump-up at Freda Rebecca Mine will support higher gold production of 16,000 kg in 2015, up from the 14,500kg estimate for 2014,” said finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa.

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Copper, zinc, pgms – Friedland’s got them all in mega quantities – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – December 3, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Robert Friedland’s latest take on his 3 megaprojects in Africa and his forecasts for likely markets are little changed.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – At yesterday’s well attended MineAfrica meeting in London, serial mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland was given virtually unlimited time to close out the day’s talks. He thus spent more than an hour talking delegates through the prospects for platinum group metals, copper and zinc, followed by why one should invest in his company to take advantage of what he sees as a rosy future ahead for the metals sector.

Most of what Friedland said about the metals and his three massive African projects he has said before but nonetheless they are interesting to recount again, with updates, given his remarkable track record in finding mega deposits.

As he is one to tell, his companies found Fort Knox (gold) and then more impressively Voiseys Bay (nickel) and Oyu Tolgoi (copper/gold) although his early near environmental disaster of Summitville (gold) is quietly forgotten. After all he was young then and has since grown older and perhaps wiser – and his almost evangelical speaking presentations have been well polished over the years.

On all the metals he points to global population growth and people’s aspirations to better themselves as being the key drivers for virtually all metals and minerals looking ahead, but particularly for those on which his Ivanhoe Mines company is concentrating.

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Miners unite to market platinum – by Allan Seccombe (Business Day – November 19, 2014)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

SA’s platinum miners have set up an international council to drive investment in the metal as prices remain stagnant, despite the five-month blow to supply earlier this year and recycling being a competitive source of metal.

Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), Aquarius Platinum, Impala Platinum, Lonmin, Northam Platinum and Royal Bafokeng Platinum will each fund the council in a formula based on their refined platinum production, and have representatives on the council’s board.

The London-based World Platinum Investment Council, funded by SA’s six largest platinum miners, will set up offices in Asia and the US to encourage platinum investment by financial institutions, wealthy individuals and retail investors.

“If we see gaps in countries or regions that don’t have exchange-traded funds of the right kind or don’t have enough inventory of bars and coins to stimulate the market and satisfy demand, we will encourage financial services companies to fill those gaps and we’ll work with them to understand what those needs are that haven’t been satisfied,” said Paul Wilson, the council’s CEO.

The council would also talk to central banks about holding platinum in the same way they held gold, as a source of value in their countries’ reserves, he said.

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Rock-bottom prices forcing Cliffs to pull up stakes in Canada – by Bertrand Marotte and Nicolas Van Praet (Globe and Mail – November 20, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

MONTREAL — Cliffs Natural Resources Inc.’s Canadian adventure is winding down. The Ohio-based mining giant is preparing to shut down its money-losing Bloom Lake iron ore mine in northeastern Quebec amid rock-bottom prices for the mineral and high operating costs. It has already closed a Labrador iron ore property at Wabush and said it is looking to sell its chromite deposits in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire.

Cliffs has spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing the high-potential Ring of Fire deposit and the existing Lake Bloom operations, but has run into a series of roadblocks, including a five-year low for iron ore prices, slumping Chinese demand and major delays in getting agreements with Ontario and First Nations over essential infrastructure for the Ring of Fire.

A shutdown of Bloom Lake would be a major blow to the local economy and to the provincial government’s multibillion-dollar Plan Nord economic development strategy pinned on natural resources extraction north of the 49th parallel.

Likewise, the Ontario government had made the Ring of Fire the centrepiece of its ambitious development plans for the mineral-rich region about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay in the James Bay Lowlands. And Cliffs had been the leading mining player in that plan.

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Marikana: The end of a bitter road promises little closure – by Niren Tolsi (Mail & Guardian – November 14, 2014)

http://mg.co.za/ [South Africa]

COMMENT

Andile Yawa’s bus leaves Queenstown in the Eastern Cape at 8pm. It reaches Johannesburg’s hustle and grime at six the next morning, and Pretoria by seven.

When the Farlam commission of inquiry starts in Centurion two hours later, Yawa is there, as he has been for almost every day it has sat over the past two years. He wants to find out who was responsible for the fatal shooting of his son Cebisile on August 16 2012 at Marikana.

Yawa’s wife Nosipho says that the time they now get to spend together at home in rural Cala is similar to when her husband worked as a miner.

There is repetition, too, in the journey into South Africa’s mineral-rich hinterland that Yawa first undertook by train in the 1970s, and since the 1980s, by bus.

The route is that of the “conscripted” that Hugh Masekela laments in Stimela, and which Cebisile followed when he succeeded his father after he was medically boarded with lung disease in 2008.

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Russia and SA aim to boost PGMs – by ANDRE JANSE VAN VUUREN AND YULIYA FEDORINOVA (Bloomberg/Business Day Live – November 13, 2014)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

RUSSIA and SA will next year invite platinum group metal producers and users for talks as the countries seek ways to support falling prices.

The two nations, holding about 80% of the world’s reserves of the metals, met last Thursday in Pretoria “to collaborate on technology development and jointly exploring new applications for the metal” to grow demand, Phuti Mabelebele, a spokeswoman for SA’s mines ministry, said on Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions.

The parties agreed to arrange a conference in the second half of next year to which they would invite mining companies, traders and consumers to “jointly consider appropriate options to achieve stability and sustainable growth”.

Platinum prices have tumbled more than 20% since Russia and SA said in March last year that they were looking for ways to buoy the market. Palladium gained about 8% in that period. SA mines about 70% of the world’s platinum and Russia 40% of its palladium.

The countries would meet for separate talks about the issue in the first quarter of next year in Russia, Ms Mabelebele said.

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Canadian platinum firms unbowed by South African labour unrest – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – November 11, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — Even as one Canadian mining company is abandoning South Africa’s troubled platinum sector, two other Canadian miners are plunging ahead with ambitious plans here.

Vancouver-based Eastern Platinum Ltd. announced the sale of its South African assets to a little-known Chinese company for $225-million (U.S.) in cash, provoking surprise and skepticism from some analysts.

Last year, the company suspended its Crocodile River platinum project in South Africa because of what it called a “perfect storm” of labour unrest, rising costs and stagnant markets.

Eastplats announced on Friday that it is selling Crocodile River and all of its other South African assets to Hebei Zhongbo Platinum, a company that seems almost unknown. The Chinese company “has never been mentioned in the press or online (as far as we can tell) prior to this announcement,” said an analyst’s report from Raymond James Ltd. on Monday.

Chinese companies have been dramatically raising their stakes in South Africa’s platinum sector with several acquisitions as other companies give up.

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NEWS RELEASE: Largo initiates exploration program on potential new discovery of chromite and PGMs

Symbol: LGO (TSX.V)

www.largoresources.com

TORONTO, Nov. 10, 2014 /CNW/ – Largo Resources Ltd. (“Largo” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it has begun an exploration program for chromite and PGMs (platinum group metals) at its Capivara Prospect which is located in the Maracas region of Bahia, Brazil, but outside of the current mining area of its Maracas Menchen Mine.

Largo has recently discovered a new chromite showing on its Capivara Prospect (Figure 1). The Capivara Prospect lies 32 km north of the Campbell pit at the Maracas Menchen Mine. The original objective was to evaluate the known magnetite horizon which includes high grade vanadium values. While evaluating this magnetite horizon, the discovery was made of a number of zones containing chromite layers with fine grained sulphides. Samples have been collected and submitted to the lab with results pending.

The chromite layers have been traced over an area of 3km (north-south) by 0.5 km (east-west). There are at least two zones of chromite layers from 20 to 25 metres wide at surface. These zones lay 400 metres west of the Magnetite horizon that contains vanadium and anomalous platinum. The chromite layers are hosted in a thick ultramafic sequence including olivine gabbro, olivine pyroxenite and dunite. In the zones, the chromite layers consist of fine-grained massive chromite (˃ 60% chromite) and disseminated sulphides that could potentially contain PGMs. These massive chromite layers are 0.50 metres to 1.0 metre thick separated by material containing lesser chromite (˂ 10% chromite) and disseminated sulphides.

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Friedland’s Ivanhoe Gets South Africa Platinum Mine Go-Ahead – by Franz Wild (Bloomberg News – November 5, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Billionaire Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (IVN) gained the most in 17 months after overcoming local opposition to get final approval to build one of the world’s biggest platinum mines in South Africa.

The country’s Department of Mineral Resources signed off on the license to produce platinum-group and base metals at the $1.6 billion Platreef project in the northern Limpopo province for a renewable 30-year period, the Vancouver-based company said in a statement today.

The authorization “signals the South African government’s determination to grow our country’s economy,” Mines Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said, according to the statement. “The Platreef Project will attract foreign capital, create much needed jobs and contribute significantly to socio-economic development in areas surrounding the project.”

The approval means Ivanhoe’s local unit, Ivanplats, will scrap a plan to cut jobs at Platreef, it said. The company had initiated the process because it said it didn’t have a definite date to start mining.

Ivanhoe jumped the most intraday since May last year, climbing 15 percent to trade at 93 Canadian cents by 10:29 a.m. in Toronto.

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