Tharisa released its latest quarterly production report with co-production of platinum group metal (PGM) up 2.3% y-on-y to 45.3koz (up 7.6% q-on-q) and chromite concentrates up 5.1% y-on-y to 416.2kt (up 6.8% q-on-q).

Tharisa mines the package of Middle Group (MG) chromitite layers of the Bushveld Igneous Complex in South Africa. In contrast to conventional miners, the Tharisa operation has focussed on recovering co-production PGMs and chromite from the outset. The petrogenesis of the MG chromitite layers offers a different flowsheet to first recover chromite, while PGM focussed miners of the Upper Group 2 (UG2) chromitite need to liberate PGMs out of chromite grains.

By- and co-product chromite production is on the rise and Project Blue data shows that these sources now account for nearly two-thirds of chromite exports from South Africa to China. The co- and by-product nature of the chromite also allows these operations to benefit from being amongst the lowest cost operations in the industry and represent the lower quartile on our industry curst curve for Q3 2022.

With Sibanye Stillwater (the largest miner of by-product UG2 chromite) and Tharisa both ramping up output according to published data to date and consumers happy to switch to lower-grade chromite concentrates, conventional primary producers are facing challenging export opportunities. As a result, several primary producers are looking to apply the Tharisa model to existing MG operations to boost the economics of their assets.