DSI Leading Provider for Platinum Mines in South Africa

Mining is South Africa’s largest primary industry sector, and continues to be a key foundation stone for the country’s economic growth and development.

In fact, the country holds 88% of the world’s platinum group minerals (PGMs), 80% of its manganese ore reserves, 45% of its gold reserves and 73% of the globe’s chromium resources.

DSI South Africa is a supplier of a full range of high-quality support products for the underground mining sector and has become an important partner for South African mine operators over the last five years. The company manufactures a wide range of products from its 5,000m2 factory in the mining area Johannesburg.

Among other products for underground support, DSI South Africa produces friction anchors, deformed and flat anchor plates, resin bolts, oslo straps and pigtails, and supplies a number of these products to players in the South African platinum industry along with more than 80,000 roof bolts each month.

Platinum, palladium and rhodium are important components of catalytic converters used for pollution control and are also widely applied in high technology, in the electrical, chemical and petrochemical industries as well as in the jewelry industry. Their excellent corrosion and oxidation resistance, biocompatibility, high melting points and high electric conductivity are merely some of the reasons why the demand for these metals continues to be high.

South Africa’s Bushveld Igneous Complex (BIC), which stretches over 400km in the Northern Province, holds the world’s largest known deposits of PGMs which include platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium.

This unique area contains estimated PGM reserves of roundabout 62,000 tons, amounting to about 55.7% of the world’s total. Apart from the Bushveld Complex and Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke, the rest of the globe holds only very few of the known platinum resources. South Africa and Zimbabwe are the only producers of platinum group elements in Africa.

South Africa’s platinum mines produced roughly 16,000 kg of rhodium and 71,000 kg of palladium in 2003, and provided jobs for approximately 90,000 people.

Rustenburg Platinum Mines (RPM), which belong to the Anglo American Platinum Corporation Limited (Anglo Platinum), is the largest single producer in the world and operates three geographically separate sections: Rustenburg, Union and Amandelbult, all on the western limb. DSI supplies Anglo Platinum with roof bolts for underground support.