Mining

Second smelter to be activated at Isithebe foundry.

Finnish company Metso will spend about R53-million on building a second furnace at its Isithebe foundry in the iLembe District Municipality. This is in response to increased demand for large crusher wear parts. The KwaZulu-Natal foundry is one of five foundries the company runs on four continents.

The renovated foundry will be able to manufacture wear parts for the Nordberg® MP2500 cone crusher as well as for Metso and third-party primary gyratory wear parts. The first products from the new furnace are scheduled for May 2019.

RBM mines the minerals sands of the northern KwaZulu-Natal coast and operates out of Richards Bay. The main products of the RBM mine are zircon, rutile, titania slag, titanium dioxide feedstock and high-purity iron.

Tata Steel KZN's high-carbon ferrochrome plant at Richards Bay went into business rescue and then liquidation before being bought by Luxembourg-based Traxys Africa in the middle of 2016, after a court ruled in its favour. Traxys has chrome mines Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces. Tata Steel did not have its own mines.

The KZN Sands mineral sands operation comprises a central processing complex in Empangeni and the Fairbreeze Mine. Expenditure over several years (which started in 2016) is expected to rise to R5-billion as it expands. Tronox, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is the major shareholder in KZN Sands.

The development of a new titanium dioxide pigment plant was announced in 2017 by Nyanza Light Metals and its technology partner,

ONLINE RESOURCES

Geological Sciences, University of KZN: www.geology.ukzn.ac.za Minerals Council South Africa: www.mineralscouncil.org.za National Department of Mineral Resources: www.dmr.gov.za

SECTOR INSIGHT

Most of South Africa’s export coal passes through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal.

Avertana of New Zealand. The use of stockpiled waste slag (from mines in Mpumalanga) sets this R4.5-billion project apart. Other products will include gypsum, aluminium sulphate and magnesium sulphate. Production was scheduled to begin in 2019.

The Hillside aluminium smelter at Richards Bay run by South Africa Aluminium is now a 100% South32 asset. Most of the product (highquality primary aluminium ingot) is exported but some liquid metal form is sent to Isizinda Aluminium which supplies Hulamin, a company that has had a rolling mill in Pietermaritzburg since 1949. Hulamin is the only major aluminium rolling operator in the region and it makes rolled products and extrusions.

Other processing facilities in the province include the steel plant owned by Arcelor Mittal in Newcastle and Safa Steel's metalcoating factory in Cato Manor.

Some of the coalfields of the province have been revived. Petmin's Somkhele Anthracite Mine, north of Richards Bay, has one of the biggest reserves of open-pit anthracite in South Africa, with measured and indicated reserves of more than 51-million tons across its four areas.