After three consecutive months of declining real mining production, Stats SA reported a solid increase of 2.9% month-on-month (m-o-m) in August.
This is despite a decrease in production levels. Hugo Pienaar, Chief Economist, of the Minerals Council of South Africa, wrote that individual commodities increased, such as the production of platinum group metals, or PGMs (+9.9%m-o-m), copper (+44.9%) and nickel (+32.1%). Diamond production declined by 22.9% month on month, while gold was down by 2.9%.
Copper mining rose sharply in August, and is expected to remain in this trajectory, with more production at the Rietberg copper mine in the Northern Cape.
Pienaar also wrote that despite the robust increase in overall mining production in August, and even assuming output remains at the higher level in September, mining output is set for a third consecutive quarterly decline in Q3 of 2024.
A report by the Minerals Council of South Africa detailed events in the first eight months of 2024, as an increase in the total real mining production by 0.3% year-on-year. This follows contractions of 7.2% in 2022 and 0.2% during 2023. At this stage, mining output is also expected to increase by around 0.5% in 2024, this is the first time, since 2021.Individual commodities production increased since August 2023, chrome (+24.8%) and manganese (+26.6%) gold (-4.6%) and diamonds down (-6.8%).
Annual coal production was relatively flat.