Miningweb Weekly: Gold crashes, China tightens its grip, and South Africa sleeps through the boom

As gold prices tumble and China cements its rare-earth dominance, veteran mining analyst Peter Major joins Alec Hogg to cut through the noise. In this hard-hitting episode, Major explains why gold’s fall could spark opportunity, how America and China’s minerals war is reshaping the world, and why South Africa’s leaders still don’t get it. From Orion’s quiet copper comeback to Kinetiko’s gas promise, Miningweb Weekly dives into the deals, the drama, and the danger of being left behind..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.BizNews Reporter.Gold’s $300 slide made headlines this week, billed as the biggest drop in a decade. But veteran mining analyst Peter Major says investors shouldn’t panic. Speaking with BizNews editor Alec Hogg, the Modern Corporate Solutions director said hype always exaggerates the noise around markets - and gold is simply taking a breather after a long sprint.“Since I was a kid, the media’s been saying the Dow’s fallen by the biggest number of points ever,” he said. “It’s true, but it tells you nothing. You need to talk percentages, not points. Gold fell three percent, and that’s big, but after such a run it’s normal.”Major likened it to an athlete catching breath. “Every market, every commodity has natural limits - call it gravity. Gold was getting close to leaving the atmosphere, but it’s still subject to gravity. When it hits $4 300, people start asking if it’s really safer than anything else.”He thinks investors are moving money into cash and bonds for safety. “Sometimes you’re tired and you just want home base,” he said. “You don’t want to be the last guy out when someone screams fire in the theatre.”‘Sit tight - Don’t chase the rocket’Asked if he’d buy gold now, Major was cautious. “I’d watch from the sidelines. Gold around $3 000 built a nice base, but $4 300 felt like a spaceship launch. When something rises too fast, it can fall just as quickly. The gold-oil ratio is the highest in fifty years. Maybe it’s time to switch some profits from Harmony or AngloGold into Sasol,” he said.Hogg laughed. “You said it better than I could.”Rare Earths: The quiet resource warFrom gold’s tumble, the conversation turned to rare earths - the metals powering everything from phones to drones. Major called them “the quiet backbone of modern technology and the next big geopolitical battleground.”“They’re not that rare,” he explained, “but they’re complex and messy to refine. China figured that out early. They built the processing plants and learned how to separate the elements while the rest of the world was asleep.”South Africa, he said, has world-class potential through Steenkampskraal, a deposit so rich it averages twenty to thirty percent rare-earth content. “That’s as rich as iron ore or manganese,” he said, “but it’s radioactive, and we never built the plants to process it. America helped us build uranium plants in the fifties - why not rare-earth facilities now?”The United States is racing to reduce dependence on China. Major believes it can, but not overnight. “Trump will do what he needs to do to get supply from China while America ramps up its own mines. He’s got allies -Australia, Canada, Japan. Within a couple of years they won’t need China, but Beijing won’t sit still either.”For South Africa, the opportunity is slipping away. “We’ve got 45 percent unemployment and the minerals the world wants,” he said. “Instead of turning that into jobs, we’re still pointing fingers. We act like victims when we should be leading.”Hogg agreed: “It’s a dream to get the politicians out and let the entrepreneurs talk.”Major smiled. “It could be more than a dream. We’ve got a bus full of good people and great assets - just the wrong driver, the same one we’ve had for 35 years.”Copper: reality vs. hypeNext came copper — the so-called “metal of electrification.” Research group Wood Mackenzie recently warned of looming shortages, but Major was sceptical.“I’ve read these scary copper reports since the eighties,” he said. “In 2010, world production was sixteen million tons. Now it’s twenty-three. That’s growth of two-and-a-half percent a year. Hardly an explosion.”peter-alec (4)He believes talk of shortages helps companies raise capital. “Everyone says, ‘There’s going to be a copper crunch, invest in my project before it’s too late.’ But investors aren’t stupid — they’ve heard that for forty years. Copper’s doing fine, better than zinc or lead, but the world isn’t desperate for it.”Major still likes Orion Minerals, a small-cap South African explorer trying to restart its Northern Cape mines. “They’ve got the ore bodies, the infrastructure, and serious suitors — Glencore, maybe the Chinese. Their biggest problem is picking which deposit to start with and who to partner with,” he said. “They need about $400 million. In South Africa that scares investors, but globally it’s not a big number.”He expects an announcement soon. “Tony Lennox, the CEO, says he’ll produce copper by the end of 2026. It’ll be tight, but they’re close.”

Miningweb Weekly: Gold crashes, China tightens its grip, and South Africa sleeps through the boom

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