Mining output falls 4% in June as PGMs, coal and iron ore all decline

Statistics South Africa data released on 13 August 2026 showed mining production down 4% year-on-year in June, a steeper fall than the 3.3% decline economists had expected. Platinum group metals fell 8.4% year-on-year, the largest single drag, contributing 2.4 percentage points to the overall decline. Coal production dropped 6.6%, subtracting 1.7 percentage points, while iron ore fell 10.2%, subtracting a further 1.5 percentage points. On a seasonally adjusted basis, production edged up 0.3% month-on-month in June, following a revised 5.1% drop in May. Measured quarter-on-quarter, overall production fell 2.7% in the second quarter compared with the first, with PGMs down 6.4%, manganese ore down 5.3% and gold down 3.2%.

A rand at a five-month high complicated the picture

The data landed as the rand traded near R16.14 to the dollar, close to its strongest level in five months, having been supported by softer US inflation data that reduced expectations of Federal Reserve rate increases. The JSE Top-40 index fell 0.9% on the day, a reminder that weak physical production data can still weigh on mining shares even when commodity prices and currency moves are otherwise favourable.

Volume weakness beneath the price boom

June's figures confirmed a pattern that had been building through the year: even as PGM and gold prices delivered exceptional rand revenue growth, the physical tonnes being extracted were, for several major commodities, in outright decline. That divergence between value and volume left South Africa's mining sector in an unusual position by mid-2026, generating record rand income while its underlying production base continued to contract, a combination that raised longer-term questions about the sector's capacity to sustain earnings once commodity prices eventually normalised.

Economists said the breadth of the decline, spanning PGMs, coal and iron ore simultaneously, made it harder to attribute the weakness to any single commodity-specific factor, pointing instead to a combination of planned maintenance, logistics constraints and normalisation after the unusually strong base effects seen earlier in the year.

Government revenue planners flagged the production weakness as a risk to longer-term tax and royalty forecasts, even as the same month's sales data showed rand income holding up strongly on the back of elevated commodity prices, underlining the widening gap between the sector's volume and value trends.

Sources

• Miningweekly: Mining production decreased by 4% y/y in June, 13 Aug 2026
• CNBC Africa: South African rand near 5-month high with weak mining data in focus, 13 Aug 2026

Photo: The Sishen iron ore mine in the Northern Cape, one of the commodities reporting a production decline in June 2026. Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.