Our managed subsidiary, Anglo American Platinum, is the world's largest primary producer of platinum, accounting for about 40% of global supply.
Operations
Our platinum operations exploit the world's richest reserve of PGMs, known as the Bushveld Complex, which contains the PGM - bearing Merensky, UG2 and Platreef ores.
It currently owns:
- ten wholly-owned mines
- a tailings retreatment operation
- three smelters
- a base metals refinery
- a precious metals refinery
Each mine operates its own concentrator facilities, sending the output to Rustenburg Platinum Mines metallurgical facilities for smelting and refining.
Platinum's largest mines were restructured into more efficient, stand-alone units to ensure a sustainable reduction in the unit cost of production and to extract maximum value from the assets employed. Our 100% owned mining operations now consist of five mines at Rustenburg Section – Khomanani, Bathopele, Siphumelele, Thembelani and Khuseleka – Amandelbult Section's two mines, Tumela and Dishab; as well as Mogalakwena and Twickenham mines and the new Unki mine in Zimbabwe.
Union Mine is 85% held, with a black economic empowerment partner, the Bakgatla-Ba-Kgafela traditional community, holding the remainder.
Platinum also has 50:50 joint ventures at Modikwa and Mototolo mines as well as 50:50 pooling and sharing agreements covering the reserves of the Kroondal and Marikana mines and portions of the reserves at Thembelani and Khuseleka. It also has a 33% shareholding in the combined Bafokeng-Rasimone platinum mine and Styldrift properties.
Strategy
Our objective is to maintain Platinum’s position as the leading primary producer of platinum. We are doing so in two principal ways: first, through managing costs as a priority, by improving productivity, increasing efficiency and through the effective management of supply chain and procurement costs; secondly, through continuing to develop the market for PGMs and to expand production into that growth opportunity.
Platinum is steadily improving the reliability of its production capability and entrenching cost management throughout the business as a long-term and sustainable culture. This will help ensure that Platinum is well positioned to extract optimal value from its assets as the market recovery continues. At the same time, there will continue to be an unremitting focus on safety as the company pursues its zero harm objective.
Growth
Following the decline of prices in 2008-09, PGM markets enjoyed a strong year in 2010 and the cost improvement trend at Platinum is expected to be sustained during 2011.
Project capital spend is now directly related to Platinum's long-term ounce requirements. This has led to a reduction in the rate of spend, and all previously deferred projects have been reviewed and are now incorporated in to our growth for value strategy.
Anglo American Platinum is involved in developing mining activity for PGMs on the Great Dyke of Zimbabwe, the second largest known repository of platinum after the Bushveld Complex. Unki mine was commissioned in 2010, and will ramp up to design capacity in 2013. We are focusing exploration work in Zimbabwe on new projects in the Great Dyke as well as establishing extensions to the Unki resource base for potential future projects.