It also has a 73% share in Marula, which is located on the eastern side. Impala’s major operational unit is located in the western side of the Bushveld Complex near Rustenburg. Its mineral resources include more than 131 million attributable ounces of platinum. Situated in the North West province of South Africa, Impala mine is the most important contributor to this output. Implats is the second-largest platinum-mining company on our list, with about 1.31 million ounces of platinum concentrate generated from mine-to-market operations in 2019. Impala Platinum Holdings (Implats) is a South African company whose owned operations revolve around the Bushveld Complex and Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke.īased in Johannesburg, Implats was founded as a subsidiary of Union Corporation in 1966. Copper, nickel and zinc are also extracted at the refinery. The refinery processes other PGMs such as ruthenium, palladium, rhodium, iridium and osmium from the ore. The South African platinum company’s precious metal refinery is constructed near two of the world’s largest platinum mines. Most of the mined ore is processed at Anglo American Platinum’s 14 concentrators and later smelted at its three refineries in South Africa. The company is a subsidiary of UK-based mining giant Anglo American.Īnglo American Platinum’s assets are mostly located in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa (including the world’s largest open-pit PGM mines Mogalakwena, Mototolo and Amandelbult) and Zimbabwe (Unki mine). Anglo American Platinum – 2.05 million ouncesįounded in 1995 and based in Johannesburg, South Africa, Anglo American Platinum is the world’s largest platinum-mining company – with production output of just over two million ounces in 2019. The world’s top five platinum-mining companies, by annual production 1.
More than two thirds of global platinum production occurs in South Africa, with Russia in a distant second place. World platinum production passed eight million ounces in 2017, but had fallen to just over six million ounces by 2019. Platinum is used to help catalytic converters remove pollutants from the exhaust gases of cars, for instance, while it is also used in the fuel cells of hydrogen-powered vehicles as a chemical catalyst. It is favoured among jeweller’s because of its malleability and resistance to fading, but platinum is not just used for jewellery alone – it serves various other purposes, especially as an industrial component in manufacturing and electronics. Mining platinum can be a challenging and laborious task, and only about 170 tonnes of the metal is unearthed annually, compared to gold’s 3,300 tonnes. Platinum is a precious metal that is part of the six-member family of platinum group metals (PGMs) sought after by mining companies – which also comprises palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium. Platinum is one of the rarest metals on the planet and a challenge to extract for mining companiesīulk ore sorter at Anglo American's Mogalakwen platinum mine in South Africa (Credit: Flickr/Anglo American)
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