Mineral sales increased by 22.3% in January while mining production was up 4.6% in February compared to the same months last year according to information released by Statistics South Africa last week.
Platinum Group Metals was the main contributor to the rise in production (6.1 percentage points) and manganese ore was the largest positive contributor to mineral sales (7.0 percentage points), while iron ore contributed the second highest percentage points to both production (3.3) and sales (6.4).
On the other hand, coal and gold were both significant negative contributors to mining production in February resulting in a decrease of 5.2 percentage points collectively.
Production grew by 2.9% in February when compared to January this year whereas mineral sales in January fell by 3.2% compared to December 2016.
