The South African Minerals Council said that between 4,000 and 7,000 jobs could be lost as a result of rising costs in the platinum industry.
The restructuring could be seen specifically in South Africa's platinum group metals (PGM) industry.
These comments were made at the Investing in African Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town on Monday.
The council said that they are discussing the restructure of unprofitable mines and noted that the platinum industry was heavily dependent on the automobile sector.
The fact that this sector is moving towards electric vehicles as an effort to curb exhaust emissions is troubling for the platinum industry and its workforce.
It should be noted that the price of platinum fell by around 15% last year.
A BALANCE SHEET OF THE MINING INDUSTRY
Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe said on Monday at the indaba that 2023 was a tough year for Africa’s mining industry due to a myriad of international and domestic factors.
He wanted to give investors “a balance sheet of South Africa’s mining industry” and point to investor opportunities in the SA mining industry.
“High energy prices, high inflation, lower commodity prices, coupled with load shedding and logistical bottlenecks continued to put pressure on operational costs and thus constrained to bare minimum the mining industry’s contribution to our economies,” Mantashe said.
“Government is investing efforts and resources to resolve these bottlenecks through the National Energy and Logistics Crisis Committees comprised of private and the public sector.”
He said the sector saw some tail winds, with sizeable investments in new mining and extensions of existing mining operations.
“A significant number of the new mining operations are concentrated on industrial mineral mines, diamond mines (alluvial), coal, manganese, iron, gold, platinum group metals, chrome, copper, lithium, and other precious metals,” the minister said.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) is monitoring the implementation of R400 billion mining projects committed at various investment conferences between 2018 and 2023.
The minister noted Nkwe Platinum which committed R13 billion in 2021 for a new platinum mine and has to date invested approximately R640 million towards the construction of the mine.
He concluded that the Mokala Manganese Mine began construction in 2019, with an investment of R1 billion, and to date 2.3 million tons of manganese have been produced and exported.
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