Every Friday, SAfm’s radio host Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: South Africa’s opportunity to export valuable green iron-ore was highlighted at this week’s Joburg Indaba.

Creamer: It was a very vigorous Johannesburg Indaba and on the second day during the first panel discussion, we had towards the end of it this proposal coming forward that we should produce green iron-ore here. Now, we have got the iron-ore, we have got the sun, we have got the wind, we have got the platinum group metals, we have got the water.

We have got everything and it doesn't need to be done in a way that you export the hydrogen on its own. You then use the hydrogen to turn to decarbonise your iron-ore and in decarbonising your iron-ore you get a premium price for it. So, you need to have an export port. Saldanha can do that and so it was a good proposal that came out of the Johannesburg Indaba, where there was a lot of debate and a lot of interesting action this week.

Kamwendo: The need for South Africa to recover the diamonds that flow down our rivers was highlighted this week.

Creamer: Alluvial diamonds. We know that Venetia diamond mine is being closed. We know that the deep diamonds are difficult to get now, because it is expensive. We know that the diamond price isn't high, but we also know that flowing along our rivers are very big diamonds and attention was drawn to the alluvial diamonds in South Afrida’s major rivers this week, because in Namibia they recovered a 176 carat white diamond. Now, that has to flow along our Orange river; it has to flow through the Mid Orange River, and we have a long history of recovering excellent diamonds from our rivers. But that used to happen when we had 220 alluvial diamond mining people operating on that water, to recover these wonderful gems.

Now, South Africa has only 22 river operators and although the diamond market isn't booming at the moment, you can see that prices are ticking up a bit. When you get a big diamond like 176 carat white diamond and you know how to deal with it and how to cut it, you can recover quite a lot of money. Against that background, a plea strong was made this week to make a comeback on the natural diamond front in general and on the alluvial diamond front in particular as they are close to surface in the water and on the soil and make sure that South Africa returns to getting the best benefit out of its river diamonds.

Kamwendo: Jonathan Oppenheimer this week strongly emphasised the urgent need to combat climate change.

Creamer: The Oppenheimer family is no longer in mining. They were synonymous with doing mining, but they are becoming very synonymous with research into climate change and warning the world around climate change. One of the things that Jonathan Oppenheimer said this week was that we had a tipping point and that the way the many scientists report needs to be very clear, so that people know very clearly in few words where the world is heading when it comes to climate change.

He emphasised that the only way of slowing down climate change is to get the majority of the world to realise that carbonisation has to stop. It was at Midrand, it is the Oppenheimer Conference and it is really pointing to the need to work urgently and that was from Jonathan Oppenheimer, the fourth generation Oppenheimer. We have had Ernest Oppenheimer, Harry Oppenheimer, Nicky Oppenheimer and now Jonathan Oppenheimer coming through and this looks like his new glory where he is going to warn the world about climate change, but with a lot of scientific backing.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.