Palabora Mining Company Limited (founded August 1956) is a

publicly traded A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...

mining company headquartered in Phalaborwa,

Limpopo Limpopo is the northernmost province of South Africa. It is named after the Limpopo River, which forms the province's western and northern borders. The capital and largest city in the province is Polokwane, while the provincial legislature is ...

province, South Africa. The company operates a single cluster of open-pit and underground mines producing mainly

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

as well as

byproduct A by-product or byproduct is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced. A by-product can be useful and marketable or it can be consid ...

s such as

precious metal Precious metals are rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical elements of high economic value. Chemically, the precious metals tend to be less reactive than most elements (see noble metal). They are usually ductile and have a high lustre. ...

s from

anode slime Electrowinning, also called electroextraction, is the electrodeposition of metals from their ores that have been put in solution via a process commonly referred to as leaching. Electrorefining uses a similar process to remove impurities from a ...

nickel sulfate Nickel(II) sulfate, or just nickel sulfate, usually refers to the inorganic compound with the formula NiSO4(H2O)6. This highly soluble blue green coloured salt is a common source of the Ni2+ ion for electroplating. Approximately 40,000 tonnes ...

sulfuric acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid ( Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular formu ...

magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula Fe2+Fe3+2O4. It is one of the oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetized to become a permanent magnet itself. With the ...

, and

vermiculite Vermiculite is a hydrous phyllosilicate mineral which undergoes significant expansion when heated. Exfoliation occurs when the mineral is heated sufficiently, and commercial furnaces can routinely produce this effect. Vermiculite forms by the wea ...

. Palabora also has processing facilities on site for the production of purified copper from mined copper ore, and a vermiculite recovery plant. Its final copper product has two forms namely, copper cathode and copper rod. PMC's open cast mine is Africa's widest man-made hole at almost wide. In addition to its mining activities, Palabora maintains subsidiaries located in the United States, United Kingdom and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

for the marketing of vermiculite. A majority of the company's stock is owned by the international mining conglomerates

Rio Tinto Group Rio Tinto Group is an Anglo-Australian Multinational corporation, multinational company that is the world's second-largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). The company was founded in 1873 when of a group of investors purchased a mine ...

(57%) and Anglo American PLC (17%), with the remaining 26% available as public float. The share's stock trades on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange under symbol PAM.

Owners

Hebei Iron & Steel Group Hesteel Group Company Limited is a Chinese iron and steel manufacturing conglomerate, also known as Hesteel Group or its pinyin shortname Hegang. The company was also known as Hebei Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. or HBIS until 2016 (). Hesteel Gr ...

(35%) * General Nice Group (25%) * ISCOR (20%) * Tewoo Group (20%)

References

{{SouthAfrica-company-stub 1956 establishments in South Africa Copper mining companies of South Africa Economy of Limpopo Non-renewable resource companies established in 1956 Open-pit mines Rio Tinto (corporation) subsidiaries Companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange