Valterra Platinum Bets on Underground Mining Project

Volterra's assets include four wholly-owned operating mines in South Africa and Zimbabwe,

which last year combined to produce about two million ounces of PGMs.

Zayuri Naidu took me to the largest of these mines, Mogalakwena, about 300 kilometers from the company's main headquarters in Johannesburg.

The Mogalakwena uh for us is our flagship asset.

It, you know, produces between 900 and a million ounces in our portfolio. So it's about 50% of our own mined production.

It's also, you know, the asset that's in the lowest end of the uh cost curve. So it's quite strategic for us.

Mogalakwena is the world's largest open pit PGM mine.

But the next stage of its growth won't come from expanding its surface footprint. Volterra plans to take its operations underground with a project called Sandsloot.

You know, from an investment perspective, it's really critical that we do look at the underground opportunity at Sandsloot, particularly because it's in line with our value over volume strategy.

So the Mogalakwena open pit, as you go deeper into the pit, it is getting more expensive to mine. we can replace some of that open pit um ore with underground ore which is higher grade

and at a lower cost.

Trial mining gets underway at Sandsloot in the fourth quarter of 2026, and investment decision will be made in 2027.

For us at Mogalakwena, because it's got such a long life, there's a lot of optionality for us in the in the in the resource.

So it's really how do we actually mine it in the most cost-effective way? And for us, we believe going underground is actually the most cost-effective option for us.

So it does reduce the amount of tons from the open pit, replaces it with much higher grade ore. Um it's obviously a lower footprint. Um so from a, you know, waste to ore ratio it's two to one versus an open pit which could be from 6 to 10 to to one.