Sibanye-Stillwater reaches wage deal with unions at Kroondal mine

The world's steel mills are churning out crude steel at a rapid pace, say the latest numbers from the World Steel Association.

Ausdrill has received a Letter of Intent from Fortescue Metals Group for the award of a mining services contract at Fortescue’s Solomon iron ore project, located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Despite a flurry of mergers and acquisitions and a robust IPO market reports out on Wednesday suggest that fear is slowly replacing greed in the mining finance business. The Financial Post reports for investment bankers, the low-hanging fruit is long gone and the biggest financings are now high-risk: gold juniors in Africa, coal in Colombia and an infamous Quebec lithium play that overstated its resource. Global Mining Finance's July round-up says untrustworthy financial and resource reporting, threats of new royalty regimes, "super-profit" and carbon taxes, political turmoil, strikes and government takeovers are worrying resource investors all around the world.

ArcelorMittal South Africa (Amsa) is on target to complete the due diligence being carried out on a potential new iron ore mine in the Northern Cape by September. Amsa CEO Nonkululeko Nyembezi-Heita told investors at a presentation of the group’s interim results for the six months to end-June in Sandton on Wednesday that once the due diligence was completed further drilling would be carried out and a feasibility study undertaken.

Shri Beni Prasad Verma, Union Minister for Steel, said that India will become the world's second largest producer of steel by 2013.

Australia's Highlands Pacific and China Metallurgical Group can now power on their $1.5 billion Ramu nickel project in Papua New Guinea after a judge threw out the environmental challenge to the project's planned deep-sea disposal of tailings after an 18-month legal battle. Ramu is situated on Papua New Guinea's north-west coast and is completely built – annual production is estimated at more than 31,000 tonnes of nickel and 3,300 tonnes of cobalt for over 20 years.

A landmark victory in the Federal Court looks set to give unions more power to bargain on behalf of workers at Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton iron ore operations in the Pilbara. The full bench of the court has ruled that a non-union collective agreement covering workers in Rio Tinto's operations was invalid. Yesterday's decision casts doubt on similar agreements at BHP and other operations in the mining region, involving thousands of workers.

The bubble that is keeping iron ore prices at historic highs may be about to burst, and when it does, iron ore giant Fortescue Minerals will still be making money, the company's new CEO predicts.

Beijing has issued a veiled threat to Australia's long-term economic future. It has vowed to break the power of the big mining companies by sourcing 50 per cent of its iron ore imports from Chinese-invested companies.