South Africa's chromium sector remains split between two very different trajectories. Chrome ore exports stayed structurally strong in June at 2.404 million tonnes, up nearly 39% year-on-year, with China absorbing more than two-thirds of that volume, and PGM producers including Sibanye-Stillwater, Northam Platinum, Eastplats and Southern Palladium's Bengwenyama project all adding further ore supply through chromite by-product growth. Ferrochrome, by contrast, is recovering only slowly despite real intervention — NERSA's 62c/kWh tariff, the Lion Smelter's phased restart, and the withdrawal of Section 189 retrenchments. Merafe's full H1 results, released 11 August, showed production still down 75% year-on-year, with sales held up mainly by drawing down existing inventory and by firmer prices, not by smelters running at anything close to pre-crisis capacity.
That gap is being reinforced from multiple directions at once. The 13 August tailings dam failure at Samancor's Dikwena Chrome mine served as a reminder that even the ore-export side of the business, for all its trade-data strength, is not without operational risk. Further afield, the international market's expectations are evolving too: Kazakhstan's Kazchrome secured a registered Environmental Product Declaration for its ferrochrome in March, following Finland's Outokumpu, which set the industry precedent in 2023, pointing to a growing role for verified carbon credentials in how ferrochrome buyers assess supply options. With tariff relief and smelter restarts having done enough to arrest ferrochrome's decline but not yet enough to restore meaningful production growth, South Africa's chrome industry enters the second half of 2026 still leaning on ore exports and drawn-down inventory to carry its earnings, even as the broader market it sells into continues to evolve.
