Star 2024-02-26

Precious metals miner announces huge gold resource of 9.1 million ounces in Nevada ANGLOGOLD Ashanti has literally struck more gold in a big way and at a higher grade. The precious metals miner, which raked in $314 million (R6 billion) in cash inflows for the second half period to end-December 2023, has announced a huge gold resource discovery of 9.1 million ounces of the sought-after and safe haven metal in Nevada, in the US. The market welcomed the news with shares in AngloGold closing 3.66% higher on Friday at R346.84. During the day the shares hit an intra-day spike of R356.73, 6.6% higher. Over three years the shares are up 17.01%. AngloGold said on Friday that after spending $73m on brownfield exploration in Nevada and completing 129km…

QUANTUM Foods, the diversified feeds and poultry business, has calculated the value of its chicken stock affected by an outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) during the quarter period to the end of January at R37 million, although there has been some respite from a decrease in the cost base for raw materials as well as lesser load-shedding hours. The South African poultry industry has been reeling from rolling electricity blackouts while the avian influenza last year resulted in shortages of table eggs. While there has been an easing off in the outbreak of avian influenza in some key areas, operators have had to decentralise production to less affected areas and provinces of South Africa. Nonetheless, there was a resurgence of avian influenza in the four month period…

THE TRANSNET National Port Authority (TNPA) has decided to pause its proposed expansion of a stand-alone berthing facility aimed at increasing iron ore exports volumes by an additional 7 million tons at the Port of Saldanha in the Western Cape. This comes as TNPA wanted to reposition the port by increasing exports capacity in the short-term (2022-2032) through the phase 2 iron ore expansion berth construction project. There are two iron ore berths operational in the Port of Saldanha, with the current installed and theoretical capacity of 60 million tons per annum, respectively. The new berth 100 was aimed to increase handling capacity to 67 million tons per annum, and more than 1.3 billion tons of iron ore have been exported through Saldanha to date. The Port…

INDEPENDENT Media’s Business Report, in conjunction with The Star/ Pretoria News, will be unpacking the socio-economic ramifications in the light of the current jobs bloodbath decimating the mining sector in the next few weeks. Companies such as Sibanye-Stillwater, Impala Platinum, Anglo American Platinum, Kumba Iron Ore and ArcelorMittal South Africa have started stream-lining operations and laying off hundreds to thousands of staff recently, as reported on in Business Report. This has also led to some shafts, mines and smelters being closed amid a downturn in some commodity prices and constraints with electricity and rail as well as port constraints have left South African bulk commodity miners in the lurch. This as each mining employee supports between five and 10 dependants, according to the Minerals Council South…

BYTES Technology Group, which is secondary listed on the JSE and with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), on Friday released more information after its CEO, Neil Murphy, resigned under a cloud last week after failing to disclose share transactions on the LSE. On Wednesday, Murphy notified the board that he had made a number of trades in the company’s shares that had not been disclosed to the company or to the market in compliance with regulatory requirements. Bytes said it understood that Murphy’s current holding of shares was 2.9 million shares and remained unchanged from the position notified to the market on November 28, 2023. In aggregate, Bytes, one of the UK and Ireland’s leading software, security, AI, and cloud services specialists, updated the market…

Sifiso Ntombela SOUTH Africa’s agriculture uses roughly 2.2 million tons of fertiliser per annum to produce a variety of crops and pastures. On average, about two-thirds of the fertiliser is used to grow grains and oilseeds like maize, wheat, soya beans and sunflower, among others. Fruit and vegetable production use nearly 18% of total fertiliser, and the rest is utilised to cultivate sugar cane and pastures. More than 95% of the country’s fertiliser consumption is imported, implying that South Africa is directly impacted by global market dynamics such as global conflicts, trade distortion policies and economic meltdowns. Impact of global conflicts on agricultural inputs The world price for fertiliser has not recovered from the shocks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which constrained the supply of fertiliser. This was exacerbated…