Zulti South project delay is already having negative impact

This is because RBM is already unable to fully utilise its smelting complex from a capacity perspective because ore grades in Zulti North, the current operating area, are declining.
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“The sand throughputs of mining are quite good and comparable with some of the better years we’ve had, but the grades are falling, says Duvenhage, who was responding to Mining Weekly during an online media roundtable.

“Just looking at Zulti North, probably from 2030 onwards it wouldn’t make sense any more to run the smelting complex. We will have a couple of years after that maybe. But 2030 to 2033, we may be mining a little bit of sand still, but we won’t be able to run the smelter complex.
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“If we add Zulti South, it extends the life by another 25 years, so very critical as we speak,” says Duvenhage.

Although RBM’s key focus right now is on restarting its existing business, which has been down for three months, it believes going back to the conversation around the R6.5-billion Zulti South project to be imperative.

“The value of Zulti South for all the stakeholders is just too significant. Maybe we should rethink how we do it, but we certainly should be bringing that conversation back as soon as we have been able to stabilise the current operations,” he says.

The contribution of Zulti South to the South African economy over its 25 years would be an estimated R100-billion.

Even the communities and government have expressed their eagerness to engage on Zulti South discussions again.

RBM’s existing business made an R8-billion contribution to the South African economy in 2020, when it was quite significantly locked down.

In the year prior to that it made an even higher contribution. Going on to 2021, RBM is seeing excellent prices and demand for its products. RBM's principal product is titanium dioxide in the form of an 85% pure titanium dioxide slag; the company also produces the higher-purity 95% titanium dioxide product rutile as well as pig iron and zircon.

“It’s not as if we’re just losing out on production for a quarter of the year. We’re losing out in a year when prices, demand and everything is actually at a very good level.

“We still want to quantify our loses but it’s fair to say it’s going to be in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. It’s significant but we were never going to make the trade-off with lives. For a change, need to know that we're busy fixing the long-term issues and not just the immediate-term ones,” Duvenhage adds.