【Ferro-alloys.com】:The South African mining industry is years ahead of its international peers when it comes to local and community engagement, Australia-listed Jupiter Mines, which owns 49.9% of the Tshipi manganese mine in South Africa’s Northern Cape, has told its shareholders.

The controlling shareholder of the long-life, low-cost Tshipi is South Africa’s Ntsimbintle Mining, chaired by Saki Macozoma.

“This is a very strong base from which we intend to grow,” Jupiter chairperson Ian Murray told Jupiter’s annual general meeting (AGM) in Perth, Western Australia.

“I want to note the tremendous local and community engagement, which is so important in today's world of mining,” said Murray, who put the South African mining industry’s unrivalled local engagement and community promotion down to its early start in 1994 under the King Report of Corporate Governance.

Regarding Australia’s own indigenous community, Murray made a point of highlighting the Whadjuk Noongar people, “on whose land we meet today”, and extended acknowledgment to the First Nations on all the lands Jupiter operates on in Australia. The Noongar people’s Whadjuk language group are the traditional owners of the land around Perth.

When it comes to South African manganese ore, which is renowned for its quality, Jupiter and South Africa’s Manganese Metal Co (MMC) are aspiring to produce high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate (HPMSM) for the battery electric vehicle (BEV) and battery energy markets.

They will both make use of South African ore, while the Botswana HPMSM aspirant, the Canada-owned Giyani Metals, intends using the manganese that it mines in Botswana.

Interestingly, the Canada-listed Giyani has secured $16-million in financing from South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to advance an HPMSM project in Botswana, ahead of the well-researched South African aspirant MMC, which has been discussing funding with the IDC for a year but to no avail.

MMC, which has been ready for some time to go ahead with a 5 000 t/y demonstration plant in Mbombela in South Africa, has made it clear that once its accredited HPMSM goes into the batteries of the world, its local operation will be able to step out and put South Africa on the map.

MMC talks with considerable authority because it has been making the world’s purest manganese metal in the form of selenium-free electrolytic manganese metal (EMM), for 49 years.

Successful demonstration of the MMC business case would result in a bigger commercial plant.

Jupiter, meanwhile, has produced a 99.9%-pure HPMSM sample using the Northern Cape’s manganese ore and bringing into service an internally developed hydrometallurgical production process.

Growing into the downstream BEV market will be done at a fast pace off an initial small base amid traditional steel industry demand for manganese continuing to advance at around population level growth.

Impressively, Jupiter, which reported net profit after tax of $76.5-million for the financial year ended February, has achieved an average dividend yield that is more than double the average dividend yield of the Australian Stock Exchange.

More than 100% of its current market capitalisation has been paid in dividends in the last five years, from a mine that still has more than 100 years of life.

• [Editor:Alakay]