{"id":868416,"date":"2026-08-23T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=868416"},"modified":"2026-08-21T17:19:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T15:19:35","slug":"good-news-for-the-174-year-old-industry-in-south-africa-employing-472000-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/868416\/good-news-for-the-174-year-old-industry-in-south-africa-employing-472000-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news for the 174-year-old industry in South Africa employing 472,000 people"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s mining sector has seen strong growth in the past year, boosted by improved reliability of the national electricity grid, but energy issues remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mining is one of the country’s biggest economic sectors, contributing roughly 472,000 jobs and 4.5% of South Africa’s total employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sector has struggled in recent years to continue its operations effectively due to unreliable service delivery, particularly in electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa’s main energy provider, Eskom, has struggled in the past to meet the country’s needs, with demand often outstripping supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These issues ultimately led to the implementation of loadshedding, where power was intermittently switched off around the country, to reduce the demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During loadshedding, some areas went without electricity for up to eight hours per day when Eskom experienced severe supply issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom has not implemented loadshedding in over one year, attributing this to improved reliability at many of its power stations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The improved reliability of the national grid has been good news for many of South Africa’s economic sectors, particularly the mining industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mining operations are notoriously heavy electricity consumers and have often seen their work disrupted by loadshedding in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The improved reliability has led to enhanced refining operations nationwide, including at Valterra Platinum, which has increased its total refined platinum by 36% in one year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Valterra’s 2025 interim results, it had reportedly refined approximately 251,000 ounces, which increased to 341,000 ounces in its 2026 interim results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increase in refining was observed across all platinum group metals (PGMs) mined by the company, resulting in higher sales and revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valterra Platinum saw its revenue increase by approximately 1,600% between 2025 and 2026, and a 127% increase in platinum sold from its Mogalakwena mine alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Valterra’s Mogalakwena operation is the largest open-cast platinum mine in the world, and is a major driver of the company’s recent success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all good news<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While the improved efficiency from Eskom has been welcome news for mining operations, the South African Minerals Council<\/a> said there are still problems to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group warned that despite improvements in Eskom’s Electricity Availability Factor (EAF), the power supplier’s total output is still decreasing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EAF is an index used by Eskom to show how well it meets the country’s energy demands, and it reached approximately 82% on 24 July 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This follows months of improvements in the EAF, demonstrating that the power supplier has consistently met electricity demand over the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this is good news in the short term, the Minerals Council has previously warned that Eskom’s electricity production is still declining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between April 2025 and April 2026, South Africa’s total electricity production declined by approximately 8.7% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The council said improved electricity availability may be due to reduced demand from larger industry players in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reported that several large industrial operations have increasingly moved towards generating their own electricity through generators or renewable electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move to self-generation has been necessitated by the continuous increases in electricity tariffs, which have doubled prices over the last decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Minerals Council has repeatedly fought these tariff increases in recent years, often citing the mining sector’s contribution to South Africa’s economy as a reason not to raise operational costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these challenges, the sector has seen its electricity costs continue to rise due to Eskom tariff increases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent data from Stats SA show that South Africa’s mining production shrank by 4% year-on-year in June 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first three months of the year, mining production increased year-on-year, with the largest increase of 10% in February.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a good start to the year, the sector saw a decline in total output in May and June, with the largest drops in PGM and coal operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of South Africa’s largest sectors has benefited from improved electricity availability, but energy issues remain a concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":811801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2091435537840078957","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2184189235734809","_sma_instagram_post_id":"17937055443101060","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[22749,1164,26016,26015,23641],"class_list":["post-868416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eaf","tag-eskom","tag-mogalakwena","tag-south-african-minerals-council","tag-valterra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868416"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870235,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868416\/revisions\/870235"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}