Fishing

Black owners are getting a hand on the tiller.

The acquisition by black-controlled Sea Harvest Group of Viking Fishing in 2018 is part of a larger trend in which empowered companies are taking controlling shares in fishing companies.

This is in anticipation of black shareholding likely being a strong factor in the determination of new fishing rights, which will happen in 2020. Sea Harvest paid R885-million for Viking. Sea Harvest has also added to its fleet a R130-million stern-fishing trawler, which can catch and process up 7 000 tons per year and can freeze up to 40 tons per day.

Sea Harvest’s return to the main board of the JSE in March 2017 brought to three the number of major fishing companies represented on Africa’s biggest stock exchange. Premier Fishing also made its shares available to the public for the first time while Oceana Group, a Tiger Brands company, has been on the JSE for 70 years.

The Oceana Group has purchased Foodcorp’s fishing rights and a US fishmeal and oil company, Daybrook. The biggest brand performer for Oceana is Lucky Star canned pilchards, which enjoys 80% of market share in South Africa.

The Western Cape is responsible for about 75% of the nation’s fishing. The value of the national catch across 22 commercial fishing sectors is about R6-billion. Sectors range from the highly capitalised deep-sea trawling industry to much smaller lobster and abalone operations.

Demersal fish such as hake and kingklip account for 46% of the national catch, with pelagic fish (anchovy, pilchards and sardines) making up 23%. Lobster makes up 11% and linefish 13%.

The National Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries wants to restructure the horse mackerel industry to promote local fishers and processors.

Most of South Africa’s large food companies have fishing divisions. Pioneer Fishing, which has no connection to the multi-product group Pioneer Foods, controls a canning, fishmeal and fish oil factory in St Helena Bay and a processing and freezing factory in the Port Elizabeth harbour. The African Pioneer Group holds a 40% stake in the company, which was formed as a joint venture with Suiderland to control the latter’s fishing rights.

Premier Fishing and Brands Limited, a subsidiary of Sekunjalo Investments, runs 16 vessels and operates at seven locations, including a 1 760-ton cold storage facility at the V&A Waterfront. The company has lobster plants at Port Nolloth and Hout Bay, and a fish meal plant at Saldanha. Dromedaris Visserye specialises in Cape lobster, and supplies sardines and anchovies to China and Japan.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Fish SA: www.fishsa.org.za National Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: www.daff.gov.za SA Deep Sea Trawling Industry Association: www.sadstia.co.za South African Maritime Safety Authority: www.samsa.org.za

SECTOR INSIGHT

New fishing rights will be allocated in 2020.

Mining

A rare earths feasibility study is underway.

Sixteen rare earth minerals have been identified north of Vanrhynsdorp, with the most prevalent being cerium, an important component of catalytic converters. A feasibility study of the Steenkampskraal rare earths mine is expected to be completed in 2019.

The acquisition in 2015 by Steenkampskraal Thorium Limited (STL) of the shares of Rareco has given it the right to the rare earth deposits at the Steenkampskraal monazite mine. STL, which already had the thorium rights, is an associate of Thor Energy in Norway.

A mineral sands project on the West Coast near Lutzville and Koekenaap is sending product to China. Australian miner Mineral Commodities (MRC) says it will spend R5-billion to 2019 in search of zircon, rutile, ilmenite and garnet.

Namakwa Sands is a mineral sands operation on the West Coast, owned by Tronox. In 2017, South African resources company Exxaro sold some of its shares but retained enough of a stake for Tronox to keep its BEE certification. The company has a mine and concentration plant at Brand-se-Baai and a mineral separation plant at Koekenaap near Lutzville about 350km from Cape Town. Ilemnite, rutile and zircon are extracted at this site and then taken to the company’s smelter at Saldanha Bay.

Afrimat has five sand mines, two lime plants and nine aggregate operations in the Western Cape. The Afrimat Kliprug Quarry in Durbanville is near the AfriSam Peninsula Quarry at Killarney north-east of Milnerton which mines greywacke stone which is then processed at the nearby plant into concrete aggregates. Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) has operations near Riebeeck-West and Piketberg (De Hoek). Slasto and building stone is quarried near Clanwilliam. Consol quarries glass sand near Philippi. The Cape Bentonite Mine near Heidelberg is run by Ecca Holdings with another site east of Knysna at Roode Fontein. Dimension stone occurs around Vanrhynsdorp and medium-grain granite is found at Paarl.

Limestone for cement, agricultural lime and feed lime is extracted at several sites in the province’s western regions while kaolin is found in Noordhoek and Somerset West. Ball clay is mined in the Albertina area by G&W Base and Industrial Minerals.

Beaufort West is the latest focus of attention for new mining in the Western Cape. Whether or not South Africa needs nuclear power is a hotly debated topic, but Tasman RSA (which includes Australian-listed Peninsula Energy and a local group called Lukisa JV) has a business plan for extracting uranium in the Karoo.

ONLINE RESOURCES

Council for Geoscience: www.geoscience.org.za Geological Society of South Africa: www.gssa.org.za Minerals Council South Africa: www.mineralscouncil.org.za National Department of Mineral Resources: www.dmr.gov.za

SECTOR INSIGHT

Plans to mine uranium in the Karoo are controversial.