By Nqobile Dludla
MOKOPANE, South Africa (Reuters) -Valterra Platinum will start trial mining at an underground pit at its Mogalakwena open-pit mine in South Africa late next year, an executive said on Wednesday.
Mogalakwena in Limpopo province, north of Johannesburg, is the world’s largest open-pit platinum group metals (PGM) mine, comprising five open pits. The ore body of its Sandsloot pit, where the underground mine is being developed, has higher grades of ore.
Platinum miners in South Africa have faced declining ore grades for years. To keep production going, companies have had to mine deeper underground, which makes operations more expensive and risky.
The mine is the crown jewel of Valterra’s portfolio, contributing about 50% of the company’s PGM production. The project to develop the Sandsloot underground mine is a nod of confidence in the future of PGMs, used primarily in autocatalysts and jewellery.
Prices of the white metals have mostly slid in the past two years, with demand hit by the rise of battery electric vehicles, which don’t require them, leading miners to cut supply.
In July, the company said it has begun the feasibility study for the underground project with a targeted completion and investment decision in the first half of 2027.
“We’re also envisioning a trial mining …in the back end of 2026,” Martin Poggiolini, executive head of corporate strategy told reporters during a media tour of the mine on Wednesday.
“If it meets our capital allocation we will be able to truck the first ore out of the top part of the ore body to the surface,” Poggiolini said, adding that ramping up to a 3.6 to a 4.5 million tonne a year operation was possible beyond 2030.
With the underground mine, Valterra hopes to achieve its targeted 10% to 50% overall increase in Mogalakwena concentrate production, it said in July.
Poggiolini and Agit Singh, Valterra’s head of processing operations, said the company is scaling up demand across existing markets such as hydrogen production and fuel-cell electric vehicles and creating demand in new segments.
“So we have really good confidence in the fundamentals around the PGM sector in the short term and certainly in the longer term,” Singh said.
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Susan Fenton)
