Platinum group

It's a bit of a killer.

You're just going to have a big position, for instance, on PGM.

We can talk about it later, which I had in 2024, far too early.

And I'm super happy.

But that's another kicker on it,

yeah.

To pivot to PGMs, you mentioned that this was a 2024 thesis that you had to sit on for a bit longer than you expected, but paid off fruitfully.

I still look at PGMs pretty constructively myself, and I'd love to know if you share that view right now or if you've completely kind of trimmed your PGM position.

JC Direct this week, we're looking at PGMs, both the metals and the miners.

Hello and welcome to Worldwide Markets.

This is episode 695 for 23 September.

Hybrids are becoming the biggie.

We're not expecting EVs to outnumber ICE until 2047.

Hybrids are going to come and take a lot of the gap and they need PGMs because they've still got the ICE engine.

So certainly, you know, we're not expecting this to be a cliff for PGMs.

It is a slow bleed.

Most misunderstood commodity?

Platinum Group Metals.

[laughs]

[laughs]

And there is going to be a lot more of that because the Moggalaquena open pit mine is on the way to being followed by Valterra's Sansloot underground project.

The Sansloot underground project is an underground PGM development situated beneath the former Sansloot open pit at the Moggalaquena mine.

If you look at Moggalaquena specifically, it has a 1 to 1 platinum-palladium ratio.

It doesn't have any chrome, and it has very little rhodium.

So, that is very important to note about the Platrif ore body.

What's also interesting about the Platrif ore body is that it dips at a 45 degree angle and then flattens out.

So, anyone that looks at the Platrif ore body needs to consider how they're going to treat base metals and then also how they're going to deal with Platrif's characteristics because what's also quite interesting about the Platrif ore body is that it has a lot of clay material associated with it and you don't use the same PGM recovery methodologies.

Amandelbult Generating Higher Revenue While Moggalaquena is where major growth is being planned, it is the conventionally mined Amandelbult that is Valterra's bigger revenue generator, located as it is on the northern part of the western limb of the Buschveld Igneous Complex and also, like Moggalaquena, in Limpopo.

basically recovery rates.

So those are the two things that affected the volumes on the platinum group metals operation side.

Philip, sticking with the PGM aspect of the portfolio, how does this then affect the strategy going forward? I mean, I'm thinking about the two pipeline projects that have been confirmed in the Bukwane PGM project, which we recently concluded the feasibility study on.

You mentioned that the business is, of course, well diversified at the moment, and that stands to benefit the business quite well.

Is that part of the strategy then going forward to say, Because of the cyclicality of market and the industry in the sector that you play in, in the mining space, diversification almost acts as its own natural hedge against that.

But quick pause.

For anyone listening who isn't deep in the commodities market, the report mentioned they are mining PGMs.

What exactly are PGMs and why are they so incredibly valuable right now?

So PGM stands for platinum group metals.

It's a family of six metals, primarily platinum, palladium and rhodium.