The platinum-group metals are six noble, precious metallic elements clustered together in the periodic table. These elements are all transition metals in the d-block.
Lephalale or Ellisras is a coal mining town in the Limpopo province of South Africa immediately east of the Waterberg Coalfield. The town was established as Ellisras in 1960 and named after Patrick Ellis and Piet Erasmus who settled on a farm there in the 1930s. In 2002, Ellisras was renamed Lephalale by the provincial government of Limpopo, after the main river that crosses the municipality. Lephalale is divided into three main subsections, Ellisras, Onverwacht and Marapong. Lephalale is derived from the setswana language meaning "to flow".
Mokopane, officially renamed from Potgietersrus in 2003, is a town in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The village Vredenburg was established by the Voortrekkers and renamed Piet Potgietersrust after the slain Voortrekker leader Piet Potgieter.
Lonmin plc, formerly the mining division of Lonrho plc, was a British producer of platinum group metals operating in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its registered office is in London, and its operational headquarters are in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Bushveld is a sub-tropical woodland ecoregion of Southern Africa. It encompasses most of Limpopo Province and a small part of the North West Province of South Africa, the Central and North-East Districts of Botswana and the Matabeleland South and part of the Matabeleland North provinces of Zimbabwe. Kruger National Park in South Africa has a number of 'Bushveld' camps. The terms 'bushveld' and 'lowveld' are sometimes used interchangeably, and the line between the two is somewhat blurred, although the lowveld lies in Mpumalanga.
Anglo American Platinum Limited is the world's largest primary producer of platinum, accounting for about 38% of the world's annual supply.
The Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) is the largest layered igneous intrusion within the Earth's crust. It has been tilted and eroded forming the outcrops around what appears to be the edge of a great geological basin: the Transvaal Basin. It is approximately 2 billion years old and is divided into four different limbs: the northern, southern, eastern, and western limbs. The Bushveld Complex comprises the Rustenburg Layered suite, the Lebowa Granites and the Rooiberg Felsics, that are overlain by the Karoo sediments. The site was first discovered around 1897 by Gustaaf Molengraaff.
The Royal Bafokeng Nation is the ethnic homeland of the Bafokeng people, a Setswana-speaking traditional community. The monarchy covers 1,000 square kilometers (390 sq mi) in the North West Province of South Africa. The capital is Phokeng, near Rustenburg. "Bafokeng" is used to refer to both the tribal grouping as well as the land its members inhabit. The kingdom's current ruler is Kgosi (King) Leruo Molotlegi, who has reigned since 2000. The Bafokeng first settled in the Rustenburg Valley in c.1450AD, the presence of the ceramics in the area suggesting the arrival of the Bafokeng in the Rustenburg Phokeng valley at about this time. Kgosi Tshukudu became the first king of a unified Bafokeng in 1750.
Hans Merensky was a South African geologist, prospector, scientist, conservationist and philanthropist. He discovered the rich deposit of alluvial diamonds at Alexander Bay in Namaqualand, vast platinum and chrome reefs at Lydenburg, Rustenburg and Potgietersrus, which led to some of the largest platinum mines in the world, phosphates and copper at Phalaborwa in the Transvaal lowveld, gold in the Free State and the world's biggest chrome deposit at Jagdlust near Pietersburg.
The Merensky Reef is a layer of igneous rock in the Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC) in the North West, Limpopo, Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa which together with an underlying layer, the Upper Group 2 Reef (UG2), contains most of the world's known reserves of platinum group metals (PGMs) or platinum group elements (PGEs)—platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium. The Reef is 46 cm thick and bounded by thin chromite seams or stringers. The composition consists predominantly of cumulate rocks, including leuconorite, anorthosite, chromitite, and melanorite.
The Stillwater igneous complex is a large layered mafic intrusion (LMI) located in southern Montana in Stillwater, Sweet Grass and Park Counties. The complex is exposed across 30 miles (48 km) of the north flank of the Beartooth Mountain Range. The complex has extensive reserves of chromium ore and has a history of being mined for chromium. More recent mining activity has produced palladium and other platinum group elements.
Mining in South Africa was once the main driving force behind the history and development of Africa's most advanced and richest economy. Large-scale and profitable mining started with the discovery of a diamond on the banks of the Orange River in 1867 by Erasmus Jacobs and the subsequent discovery and exploitation of the Kimberley pipes a few years later. Gold rushes to Pilgrim's Rest and Barberton were precursors to the biggest discovery of all, the Main Reef/Main Reef Leader on Gerhardus Oosthuizen's farm Langlaagte, Portion C, in 1886, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the subsequent rapid development of the gold field there, the biggest of them all.
Impala Platinum Holdings Limited or Implats is a South African holding company that owns several companies which operate mines that produce platinum and platinum group metals, as well as nickel, copper and cobalt. Its most significant mine is the Impala mine in the North West province of South Africa. The company also owns or has interest in the Two Rivers mine and the Marula mine in the South Africa Bushveld Igneous Complex and the Mimosa mine and Zimplats in Zimbabwe, as well as the Impala Refining Services which smelts and refines metals for other companies. In December 2019, Impala Canada was formed, owned by the holding company, out of the acquisition of North American Palladium and its mine in Ontario, Canada.
Potholes are frequently encountered during mining operations in the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa. Two orebodies, the Upper Group 2 (UG2) and the Merensky Reef, host about 70% of the world's platinum group metals (PGM), and pose major extraction problems for the mining industry in their faults, dykes, joints, domes, iron-rich ultramafic pegmatoids, rolls and dunite pipes. The greatest mining problems, though, are presented by potholes.
North American Palladium Ltd. is a former Canadian mining company that operated between 1968 and 2019 and that since 1993 operated the Lac des Iles mine in the Lac des Îles igneous complex of the Thunder Bay District of Ontario. The company primarily mined and explored for palladium but also for gold. Platinum, silver, nickel, and copper are mined as by-products. The company was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange but was acquired by Impala Platinum in 2019.
Steelpoort is a mining town in Sekhukhune District Municipality in the Limpopo province of South Africa. It is located on the border with Mpumalanga province.
The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) was formed in Mpumalanga, South Africa, in 1998 as a breakaway faction of the COSATU-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It was formally registered as a union in 2001. According to Mining Weekly, the union sees itself as distinct from NUM in that it is "apolitical and noncommunist".
On 15 November 2014 workers at South Africa's major platinum producers – Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum, and Lonmin – went on strike demanding that wages be immediately doubled. However, after five months of striking they settled for a more modest pay increase spread over three years. It was the longest and most expensive strike in South African history.
Northam Platinum is an independent integrated PGM producer listed on the JSE. The primary operations are centered on their two wholly owned mines, Zondereinde and Booysendal, and the additional metallurgical operations at Zondereinde including a smelter and base metals removal plant. Northam’s three main products mined are platinum, palladium and rhodium and are consumed by industries such as the motor manufacturing, jewellery and other industrial sectors.
The Magaliesberg Biosphere Reserve is located in South Africa between the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg to the east and Rustenburg to the west. The reserve lies at the interface of two great African biomes — the Central Grassland Plateaux and the sub-Saharan savannah — and the remnants of a third biome, the Afro‐montane forest. The rich biodiversity includes floral species such as Aloe peglerae and Frithia pulchra, and faunal species such as the forest shrew, sable antelope and 443 bird species representing 46.6% of total bird species in the southern African sub-region.
