Statistics released by Stats SA on Tuesday, 27 November show a third-quarter growth of only 1.2% on a seasonally adjusted and annualised basis, compared with 3.4% in the prior quarter. This is mainly due to a sharp decrease in mining production caused by the wildcat strikes in the platinum- and gold-mining industries.

More than 10 000 miners could be retrenched in the first quarter of next year, as platinum mines were struggling to break even and gold mines had to go deeper, according to Chamber of Mines CEO Bheki Sibiya.

Beneficiation of mineral resources in South Africa has been given a huge boost with a consortium led by the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) having bought the Scaw Metals Group (Scaw) for R3.4-million from Anglo American.

Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), the world’s biggest platinum producer, is planning a new mine in Zimbabwe through its subsidiary, Unki Mine, whose chief financial officer Colin Chibafa said the new mine had the potential of doubling output from Zimbabwe.

Equipment and service suppliers to the mining industry are likely to face uncertainty in the sector in 2013, if a forecast by JSE-listed distributor Barloworld is anything to go by. While it has reported an 18% increase in revenue to R58.6 billion for the year ended 30 September, the going was about to get tougher as the Caterpillar distributor was facing “a challenging mining environment”, warned CEO Clive Thomson.