Three high-level priority areas have been identified for mining, i.e., short- to medium-term opportunities where STI can play a role in driving greater circularity in the mining sector:
- Resource Security: Understanding South Africa’s minerals and metals resource base for improved resource monitoring and management; supporting national resource security, with a specific focus on critical raw materials (CRMs), linked to resource cadastres.
- Resource Efficiency: Driving greater circularity within mining operations, including reducing the demand for resources in mining operations (energy, water, materials); precision-mining, with the aim of reducing the generation of mining waste during extraction. This includes designing and optimising process steps with the aim of decreasing resource use and waste.
- Diversifying Sources: Strengthening alternative, local sources of minerals and metals through, for example, developing downstream industries that recover value from tailings, residue stockpiles and other mining waste; and growing local recovery and recycling of minerals and metals from municipal and industrial waste streams, such as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), lighting, end-of-life vehicles and associated components, and other mining equipment.