Exploring drivers of vertical forward integration in South Africa’s platinum mining industry

Abstract

Historically, South Africa has positioned itself as a net exporter of refined and semi-finished Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) related products, which has stayed the same. This position generates much-needed foreign capital during commodity booms, but it has a long-lasting catastrophic impact on the economy. As a result, the South African PGMs industry is experiencing the lock-in effect of only specialising in exports of refined and semi-finished PGMs-related products. This trade pattern impairs South Africa’s capability to develop a comparative advantage in the export of finished PGMs-related products.

This research seeks to identify, explore, and obtain an in-depth understanding of the drivers of vertical forward integration to migrate the PGMs industry from the export of refined and semi- finished PGMs-related products to finished PGMs-related products. The drivers of vertical forward integration were identified in the literature review. An in-depth understanding of these drivers was obtained through a qualitative research study. The themes associated with these drivers were identified by running structured interviews and analysing the data in Atlas.ti software.

The structured interview results show that export-led industrialisation policies targeting international trade, innovation capabilities, relatedness of capabilities and foreign direct investments (FDI) will transform the South African PGMs industry into a manufacturing sector and exporter of finished PGMs-related products. However, the above drivers of forward vertical integration require a strong and progressive institutional regime with large institutional capital.

The input-output model of the forward vertical integration process in South Africa’s PGMs industry takes the PGMs reserves as an input transformed resource and institutional regime as transforming resource. The four remaining drivers, international trade, innovation capabilities, the relatedness of capabilities and FDI are important components in the transforming process. The transforming process entails the creation of new knowledge and new technology, absorption of foreign knowledge and technology, the liberalisation of international trade and entrepreneurship. The output of the above model is finished PGMs-related products