Impala Platinum, the world's third largest producer of platinum group metals, plans to have spent over R400 million by mid-2005 on a project to increase refining capacity at its Springs plant from 1.65 million ounces of pgms a year to 1.85 million.

Another R400 million will be spent between then and 2006 to further increase refining capacity, to two million ounces a year.

Operations executive Dirk Theuninck said the project was being undertaken to relieve bottlenecks in the refining process for both base and precious metals.

'We will be awarding the engineering, procurement and construction management contract soon', he told Mining Weekly, 'and the precious metals refinery project should be completed at the same time as the base metals refinery project at the end of 2006'.

He added that there is a 'possibility' that the plant's capacity could be expanded further, to 2.5 million ounces a year, after 2006.