Since World War 2, platinum mine production has grown continuously in response to new applications being developed for the metals. A significant new use of platinum was in the petroleum industry where platinum catalysts were introduced to increase the octane rating of petroleum and to manufacture important primary feedstocks for the growing plastics industry.
This was followed in the s by growing demand for platinum jewellery — given its purity, colour, prestige and value. The advent of black economic empowerment, and the use-it-or-lose-it approach to minerals rights — envisaged in the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of — led to a shift in the sector, and the growth and rise of smaller platinum companies, including intense interest from foreign investors and operators alike.
This legislation coincided with an upswing in PGM demand and prices from through to before a global economic depression heralded the end of the glory days in the platinum sector and shut many smaller operators down.
Subscribe Unsubscribe. Free call: Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Free fax: 00 77 Merensky returned again to Johannesburg in August, while the Lombaard-led team continued prospecting.
Who exactly discovered the reef remains a mystery, as samples were panned a distance away from exploration sites due to the lack of water. Nevertheless, a rapid development of mining operations ensued including mainly developments by Rand Mines, Consolidated Gold Fields and Johannesburg Consolidated Investments. A pictorial map visualising the future, published in a mining and industrial publication in depicted the nearby town of Steelpoort as outgrowing the current status of Johannesburg as the mining and industrial capital of South Africa.
He continues that, although other platinum- group metals, such as rhodium and palladium, could be distinguished at this stage, there was no application for them and they were probably used together with platinum. A year earlier Transvaal Platinum started exploiting the Waterberg platinum deposit, discovered by prospector Adolph Erasmus, but it proved to be of little economic significance. The beginnings of a co-ordinated world marketing organisation were noted in , which included the still-thriving UK company Johnson Matthey, whi ch was also the refiner of South African platinum until the s.
He incorrectly thought that there might be major concentrations of easily worked alluvial platinum derived from these outcrops. The South African geologists followed this Russian model closely and began investigations into the chromite-rich rocks of the Bushveld Complex.
Geologists of the Geological Survey of South Africa, Wagner's employer at the time, made a study of the chromite-rich rocks of the Bushveld Complex. Hall and Humphrey reported the occurrence of platinum in these rocks in 5 , a publication that is often quoted as the first reference to platinum in the Bushveld Complex.
During the period to , it can be assumed that it was not only the Geological Survey that was actively evaluating the platinum potential in chromite.
It would appear that considerable exploration was also being undertaken. If Merensky had been involved in previous unsuccessful exploration projects in the eastern Bushveld, why should he try to raise money again in for yet another prospecting campaign?
The above review is based entirely on published documents, but I now speculate on why Merensky would contemplate a subsequent exploration project when the previous attempts had been unsuccessful. Admittedly, the first platinum mine in South Africa had just opened in , near Naboomspruit, km away, but Merensky knew well that the host to the platinum there was in quartz veins, geologically apparently totally unrelated to the Bushveld Complex.
That was therefore not the incentive. To get inside Merensky's mind, I must refer to another incident related by Olga Lehmann 7. Merensky had been contracted by a major mining house in Johannesburg to evaluate a reported gold discovery in Madagascar.
Several consultants joined ship in July en route to Madagascar, and were shown an area in which gold had been found. Merensky and others retraced this gold with their pans through several streams and small pits. He turned in the opposite direction from his hotel and began panning other streams. He again found gold and realised that the area which the consultants were meant to investigate had been salted illegal enrichment of an ore in an area or sample to be assayed.
Merensky recognised that the gold grains panned in the area being promoted and the gold grains he found from elsewhere were of different shapes, and that the associated dense minerals in his pan were different in the two localities.
Sadly, salting was not an unknown activity in those days, but Merensky had looked beyond the obvious, used his mineralogical acumen and recognised the fallacy! He found the process of white Europeans moving to South Africa to set up mining operations, staffed predominantly by black workers. This trend would characterise later generations of South African mining.
Diamond and platinum rushes In the s, two notable diamonds were unearthed; The carat Eureka diamond and the carat Star of South Africa, inspiring a diamond rush in the region aided by the more established coal industry.
In , the Orange Free State government-commissioned English-born George William Stow to uncover coal deposits; he would later move to Kimberley , the famous Big Hole diamond mine site. The first diamonds were uncovered at the site of the Big Hole in While the mine would yield 2,kg of diamonds and help establish the De Beers mining company, which remains a major industry player to this day.
0コメント