INDONESIA has a habit of minting billionaires. The listing of PT Amman Mineral Internasional was one of the best IPOs globally last year. At $750m it topped the list of debutants to the country’s modestly sized equity market that included Harita Nickel and Merdeka Battery Minerals, which collectively raised $1.25bn via IPOs. They have mining in common where a concerted push towards battery minerals is giving fresh impetus to a nation known for its coal. One consequence of the IPO rush is a bevy of new billionaires. Amman Mineral chair Agus Projosasmito was worth $2.7bn after the firm’s stock r ..read more

AFTER missed copper production guidance last year, the next most criticised aspect of Anglo American’s performance for the 12 months ended December was its 85% stake in De Beers. A dramatic decline in diamond prices resulted in second-half losses at the diamond producer, part of the Anglo group for over a century. Anglo wrote down De Beers for $1.8bn. Questions about De Beers’ suitability in Anglo are not new. Lately, the criticism has been how the quintessential luxury product fits in with Anglo’s tilt towards battery minerals. De Beers’ financial underperformance has compounded these concern ..read more

PETRA Diamonds has issued a restructuring notice to employees at its Finsch mine in South Africa as part of efforts to stem negative cash flow. The UK-listed miner said on Monday it hoped the measure would reduce operating costs by $30m a year starting in its 2025 financial year. This is better than the previous $10m/year target. Richard Duffy, CEO of Petra said today that the cost cutting push would “transition Petra to a more smoothed capital profile”. This would enable “sustainable net free cash flow generation” despite the slump in diamond prices. The group previously announced a delay in ..read more

The JSE’s four largest platinum miners cut nearly R30bn in planned capital and stay-in-business expenditure in February in a clear vote that the metal’s price, and those of its palladium and rhodium co-products, will be lower for longer. Far longer, in fact. Northam Platinum CEO Paul Dunne said at his firm’s interim results presentation on March 1 that it could take two years before bad market sentiment in platinum group metals (PGMs) shakes out. That’s sobering news for a sector that paid record dividends only two years earlier. 2023 was a year to forget for the PGM industry. The price of pal ..read more

HARMONY Gold on Thursday said it had signed a five-year wage deal with unions for a 6% per year increase including benefits, effective from July. The agreement is significant as it is with all unions simulltaneously, the first time this had been achieved by the company in its history. Negotiations, which took three months and were without incident, were with the Coalition (comprising the National Union of Mineworkers, UASA and Solidarity) as well as the Association of Mineworkers & Construction Union and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. “For the first time in our 73-year ..read more

ACQUIRED by Sibanye-Stillwater with a view to building a strategic, long-term presence in the gold tailings industry, DRDGold now plays the arguably more important role as the under pressure group’s most valuable gold asset. According to a report by RMB Morgan Stanley, higher gold prices stand to make DRDGold the largest contributor from gold to Sibanye-Stillwater’s Ebitda. This is more significant when seen against actual production. Sibanye-Stillwater produces about 700,000 ounces a year from the Kloof and Driefontein mines,west of Johannesburg and Beatrix in the Free State. But the 180 ..read more

DESPITE a promising ripple in the price of palladium, a much hoped-for recovery in platinum group metal (PGM) prices has so far not materialised. This could have dire results for South Africa’s miners of the metals. According to a report by RMB Morgan Stanley, published on March 13, mines owned by Sibanye-Stillwater, Impala Platinum (Implats) and Northam Platinum’s Eland mine could burn about $430m in cash, after stay-in-business expenses, by calendar year-end – a staggering sum. Only the price of rhodium has improved since the penning of the report. The metal is currently trading $125 per oun ..read more

THE dirty commodity might be unpopular with some, but thermal coal is proving to be good business. Demand for the fuel was stoked to a record high of more than 8.5 billion tons last year, according to the International Energy Agency. It expects coal demand to remain robust until 2026, followed by a slow decline, partly driven by energy policy and subdued growth in China. Ever the short-termists, shareholders want coal miners to maximise profits now. Tribeca Investment Partners, an Australian investor, wrote to Glencore last month asking it to reconsider the planned spinning out of its thermal ..read more

GOLD Fields warned first quarter production would be lower than forecast owing to weather related disruptions at its Australian and South American mines while a fatality at South Deep in South Africa interrupted “operational momentum”. Production would come in between 460,000 and 470,000 ounces for the quarter which is roughly 110,000 oz below the assumed run-rate required to meet the upper end of annual guidance of 2.33 to 2.43 million oz that Gold Fields maintained today. The lower production would inevitably hit costs but Gold Fields didn’t provide details. The company is due to report its ..read more

On February 28 Harmony Gold approved the R7.9bn deepening of its Mponeng mine, in Carletonville, west of Joburg. Once the capital work is complete in 2030, the South African miner will be operating at a depth of about 4.1km, making the world’s deepest mine even deeper. The scale and ambition of the Mponeng “extension” — Harmony has forbidden the use of the word “deepening” for the project — is a reminder of South Africa’s former pre-eminence in world gold when, during the 1970s, gold fields stretching from the Witwatersrand to the Free State and Mpumalanga supplied roughly three-quarters ..read more