South African chrome production is suddenly a priority for the country’s platinum miners. Chrome used to come out of the ground as an afterthought, a byproduct of digging for platinum group metals, or PGMs. Not anymore. Sibanye-Stillwater, Northam Platinum and a growing list of developers now plan around it.
From afterthought to revenue line
Sibanye says chrome made up 8% of revenue from its South African PGM operations in 2025, up from 3% in 2020. It now wants to lift output to 2.3 million metric tons a year by 2033, an increase of about 75%. The company already supplies roughly 10% of the country’s chrome, and one executive said chrome is “no longer just a byproduct in our thinking.”
Northam reported record chrome concentrate output of 1.69 million tons in its latest financial year, up 17.4%. Smaller developers show the shift even more clearly. Southern Palladium raised its projected chrome output at the Bengwenyama project to more than 1 million tons a year after improving chromite recovery from 30% to about 86%. Executive chair Roger Baxter says chrome’s share of project revenue rises from about 12% to 19%, which makes it a bigger contributor than palladium.
Why now
Part of the answer is cushioning. PGM prices swing hard, and Sibanye executives describe chrome as a steady earner when they slump. This year earnings are strong, with Valterra Platinum’s first-half revenue up 93%, yet Sibanye expects PGM output to decline as shafts close. The shallow UG2 reef, which is rich in chromite, is where mechanized mining and future growth sit.
Operational tweaks, not new mines, are doing much of the work. Sibanye owns six of the 12 chrome recovery plants on its footprint and Glencore owns five, which the company says unlocks synergies.
The market is finely balanced. South Africa supplies about 61% of the world’s chrome, and its ore exports hit 2.4 million tons in June, up nearly 39% from a year earlier. Sibanye expects supply to grow about 5.8% this year to meet 44 million tons of demand, a balance one executive called “very fragile.”
It is not only chrome. Platinum Group Metals Ltd. says gold could make up nearly 19% of output from a redesigned Waterberg project, up from 5% in an earlier study.
The plans carry risks. Developers still have to secure buyers and refining capacity for their concentrate, and Sibanye’s 2033 target is a company projection that depends on prices and execution. Even so, the direction is clear. Chrome has moved from the margins to the business plan.
