Palabora Mining Company Limited (founded August 1956) is a publicly traded mining company headquartered in

Phalaborwa Phalaborwa (translated to English as ''better than the south; phala'' means ''better than and borwa'' means ''south'') is a town in the Mopani District Municipality, Limpopo province, South Africa. It is located near the confluence of the Ga-Se ...

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 Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

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 byproducts such as precious metals 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 ...

s, nickel sulfate, sulfuric acid,

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 th ...

, 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 we ...

. 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, bor ...

for the marketing of vermiculite. A majority of the company's stock is owned by the international mining conglomerates Rio Tinto Group (57%) and

Anglo American PLC Anglo American plc is a British listed multinational mining company with headquarters in London, England. It is the world's largest producer of platinum, with around 40% of world output, as well as being a major producer of diamonds, copper ...

(17%), with the remaining 26% available as

public float In the context of stock markets, the public float or free float represents the portion of shares of a corporation that are in the hands of public investors as opposed to locked-in shares held by promoters, company officers, controlling-interest inv ...

. The share's stock trades on the

Johannesburg Stock Exchange JSE Limited (previously the JSE Securities Exchange and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange) is the largest stock exchange in Africa. It is located in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, after it moved from downtown Johannesburg in 2000. In 2003 ...

under symbol PAM.

Owners

* Hebei Iron & Steel Group (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