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BUsH teLeGRAPH

Friedland flags mine

safety at Platreef

he world’s most famous mining entre- management and against all his
Tpreneur – Robert Friedland – was in training….but he still did it anyway.
superb form at Mining Indaba where he So why would Friedland make
put the boot into his competitors; slagged such a claim? Well, he clearly be-
off Chile as an investment destination lieves he does not have a rockfall
compared to the Democratic Republic of problem as he described the un-
Congo (DRC) and unashamedly hyped derground conditions on the Pla-
the prospects for his own Ivanhoe Mines treef as consisting of “very com-
Ltd. petent rock”.
So, what’s new? Well, love him or hate He was also probably looking to
him – and sections of the media gener- differentiate the Platreef from the
ally hate him which is a sentiment Fried- rest of the platinum mining sector
land seems only too happy to reciprocate in the same way that, earlier in his
– the man manages to explain the rel- presentation, he sought to differ-
evance of mining to modern society in a entiate between Ivanhoe’s copper
way that no other mining executive I have mines under development in the
listened to can. DRC with the established copper
But he made one comment in Cape giants such as Escondida in Chile
Town which I hope will not come back which is owned by BHP Ltd. Robert Friedland
to haunt him although I fear it may well “The great copper mines in
do so given the realities of underground Chile are like little old ladies lay- Pityana in 2017.
mining in South Africa. That concerns ing in bed waiting to die,” according to AngloGold and other mining compa-
mine safety which is a red-hot topic in Frieldand. nies responded by challenging the stop-
the country. He was a bit more polite about South pages in court which resulted in having
Extolling the virtues of his Platreef Africa’s existing platinum sector com- the S54 notices lifted or declared invalid.
PGM mine under development in South menting: “We think South Africa is fac- The mining industry has cleaned up
Africa, Friedland repeated a comment he ing a supply cliff from the existing mines. its act to a large extent since. Latest
has made frequently before which is that; They are deep, they have safety issues, statistics published by the Government
“no worker underground on this mine will they are tired and they need a lot of capi- in January showed the industry had its
lift anything heavier than a pencil be- tal.” best ever year in 2019 recording 51 fatali-
cause it will be fully automated”. Never a man prone to understatement, ties compared with 81 in 2018. The stats
Then he added: “There will be zero fa- Friedland said the Platreef should just be also showed that fatalities had dropped
talities in this mine – zero.” viewed as “a precious metals project”. by 92% between 1993 and 2019.
That is a dangerous statement to make “We have more than 150 moz of plati- Let’s hope Friedland does not come to
given the harsh realities of underground num, palladium, gold and rhodium. This rue those remarks and let me finish this
mining in South Africa. No mine man- is the largest precious metals orebody in column with some of his sly “investment
ager in South Africa would make such a the world,” he said. advice” to delegates, although he insist-
claim because it involves factors that are But he clearly wants to differentiate the ed at the time he was not giving out any
beyond the control of his management Platreef from the existing platinum mines investment advice at all.
teams and safety procedures irrespec- in the eyes of the Government in various He told delegates: “I don’t want to
tive of how excellent and comprehensive ways and one of those is safety. give you investment advice because if
they may be. The ANC government has “had it in” you give a friend investment advice you
From my side there’s also a supersti- on ideological grounds for the country’s might lose your friend but over the past
tious aspect to this. I have been report- mining industry since it came to power five years – which is an arbitrary figure –
ing on the mining scene for something in 1994 and one of the whipping posts it compared to say Teck [Resources Ltd],
like 35 years and time and again I have has used is mine safety. or BHP or Vale or Rio Tinto [Ltd] or Lun-
seen a mine declare proudly that it has Let’s face it they had a good point, but din [Mining Corp] or First Quantum [Min-
achieved some safety milestone such as the Government started using safety leg- erals Ltd] – we are doing OK.
1 million fatality-free shifts and extoll its islation measures such as Section 54 “I am not here to tell you to buy the
safety achievements only to have an ac- (S54) work stoppage notices to punish shares, they were up 45% last year. I
cident involving fatalities within days or mines for political reasons by shutting think they will double this year. It’s better
weeks of that announcement. down operations unnecessarily. than leaving your money in the bank. “
The two most frequent causes of mine- AngloGold Ashanti Ltd’s mines were
worker deaths have been rockfalls in hit by a string of S54 notices following Brendan Ryan is a Johannesburg-based
deep level mines and incidents where an severe criticism of the Government in mining writer
individual worker has done something in general, – and former president Jacob
breach of all the safety rules laid down by Zuma in particular – by chairman Sipho

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