South African platinum sector girds for wage talks, pleads poverty

* Amplats, Impala and Lonmin (Berlin: 30318982.BE - news) gear up for talks in June

* Platinum price down around 30 pct year-on-year

By Ed Stoddard and Zandi Shabalala

CAPE TOWN, Feb 8 (Reuters) - The world's top platinum producers, which are losing money as costs soar and prices sink, are pleading poverty in advance of South African wage talks set to start in April (LSE: 0N69.L - news) .

Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin will again be sitting around the table with the hardline Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which lead a five-month strike in 2014.

"The companies very focused on getting the message across of the dire economic situation that platinum is in," Elize Strydom, the chief negotiator for South Africa's Chamber of Mines, told reporters at an industry conference in Cape Town.

"They are really doing a lot of leg work from CEO level to the investor relations people to share the realities of what is happening in platinum," she said.

Prices for platinum, used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles, lost a quarter of their value last year and were down 30 percent year-on-year at the start of February.

Underscoring the industry's woes, Amplats reported an 86 percent drop in full-year profit on Monday, hit by write-downs and restructuring costs amid depressed prices.

Lonmin recently had to go back to shareholders for a rights issue to shore up its battered balance sheet.

"The best time to influence the demands is obviously before the negotiations begin. To bring some realism into the whole debate," Strydom said.

The current wage agreements expire in June.

The Chamber of Mines reckons that about 80 percent of South Africa's plantinum industry is currently loss-making. The wage talks will involve around 125,000 workers, Strydom said.

One thing that needs to be ironed out is whether the talks will take place at the company level, or will the trio come together for collective talks with AMCU, which is known for its uncompromising approach to wage negotiations.

"The preference of the industry is that they would prefer to do it centrally. It saves time," Strydom said. (Editing by James Macharia)