Minister of Minerals and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe has revealed that an investment of R7 billion will be required to extract rare earth elements at the Zandkopsdrift Rare Earth Elements Project.
Responding to Parliamentary questions from IFP MP Nompumelelo Mhlongo, Mantashe said the project aimed to extract neodymium and praseodymium and that it would create 3,500 jobs.
“The Zandkopsdrift project was supported by the Department of Minerals and Petroleum Resources for approval by the EU as a Strategic Project under the Critical Raw Materials Act,” he said.
The department is working with the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa, which developed the Critical Minerals Initiative Coordination Platform.
Mantashe said it had identified projects under the localisation and value addition pillar of the strategy and mobilised funding to support several projects, including Zandkopsdrift in the Northern Cape.
Neodymium and praseodymium rare earth elements can be combined to create NdPr, which is used to build the world’s strongest permanent neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets.
The magnets are critical to various tech applications, including the manufacture of electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbine generators, hard drives, and robotics.
They are also critical in the manufacture of various consumer electronics, including headphones, speakers, microphones, and haptic actuators.
This is because compact NdPr magnets deliver strong audio outputs while keeping component sizes small for these applications.
Their application makes these rare earth elements critical to many of the world’s most prominent tech companies.
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