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A strong renewed thrust is under way for the creation of a platinum group metals (PGM) commodities exchange in South Africa to take advantage of South Africa's massive PGMs endowment at a time when the forward momentum of the essential green technology that PGMs enable has reached the point of being irreversible.
From a global trading point of view, the PGM exchange envisaged would accelerate the process of price discovery on a digital platform governed independently by transparent rules and regulations.
"We've got all that it takes…and the timing couldn't be more favourable," Pan-African Investment CE Dr Iraj Abedian highlighted at the tenth annual PGM roundtable of South Africa's Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, which was covered by Mining Weekly.
Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection executive director Joel Netshitenzhe concurred: "This discussion is meant to help us assess the progress that we are making and, self critically, to examine whether there are areas where we can do better.
"One such area is the issue of financial beneficiation, which we need to interrogate with frankness and strategic foresight, because it does not make sense that with 80% of the world's reserves of PGMs, we should be promoting PGM exchanges in other parts of the world while resisting the establishment of one in our own country."
Reiterated was that South Africa must extend the beneficiation value chain beyond refining and fabricating into financial beneficiation and by including commodity exchanges in a redefined national industrialisation strategy.
It was described as being important to note that South Africa's strategic positioning in PGMs diminishes with every day that passes, owing to more secondary markets increasing their share of global PGMs supply through the recycling and re-beneficiation of existing PGMs in different manufactured items around the globe.
But even with that, South Africa continues to have an overwhelmingly dominant global position, not only for now, but potentially for the next 100 years - and beneficiation has to be long-term orientated.
"It's not a five-year or a ten-year or a short-term beneficiation. It's the positioning of South Africa to have benefits for the next 100 years or so.
"If you want an example of it, look at the gold exchange in London. The London gold exchange was established more than 100 years ago, and even today, it's difficult to dislocate it. It stays put, and generates benefits for the UK, despite the UK not having an ounce of its own gold or gold mining.
"Importantly and critically, a commodity exchange is the most valuable end of a beneficiation value chain, at a time when PGMs are proving themselves as modernity's gift that keeps on giving. So, as we South Africans agonise over the many challenges we face, we need to remember our natural blessings," said Abedian, whose constant contention during the event was to point out that a PGM exchange has the potential to link very beneficially to South Africa's financial, legal, insurance, warehousing, logistics, and many other sectors. To the extent that it is a digital platform, a PGM exchange would enhance the globally growing digitalisation value chain.
In addition, the process of price discovery would provide South Africa with a long-term platform on which to develop the interrelated beneficial value within in the PGMs industry.
"We need to reimagine beneficiation," Abedian added, while Netshitenzhe pointed out that the rise of AI and its data centres is creating energy demand "at a scale rarely seen in history".
Such demand would likely double by 2030, a magnitude equal to today's total Japanese electricity consumption.
Many of the data centers are introducing PGM-based hydrogen fuel cells as their source...

Strong renewed thrust for South African PGM exchange under way

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