Twitter

Africa Mining

Sick miners ask Anglo for details of defence – by Ernest Mabuza (Business Day Live [South Africa] – April 29, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

THE long-awaited hearing in which 10 former Anglo miners with silicosis and silico-tuberculosis are seeking compensation began on Friday with an application to compel Anglo American to provide more details of its defence.

The Legal Resources Centre, Legal Aid SA and London-based Leigh Day have been involved in the groundbreaking class action suit since 2004. The two sides agreed last year to go to arbitration.

President Steyn, at which the 10 miners worked, was Anglo’s largest mine in the Free State in the 50-year period up to 1998. Four of the claims are brought by the next of kin of miners who have passed away since the litigation began.

The 10 plaintiffs are part of a group of 18 from the Free State, Eastern Cape and Lesotho who are claiming compensation for silicosis and silico-tuberculosis they argue were contracted when they worked at mines owned by Anglo.

Their claim is that Anglo American SA, the head office company of the Anglo group, was negligently controlled and wrongly advised the mines about dust control measures and silicosis. The former miners are seeking compensation for pain and suffering and for lost earnings and medical expenses.

Read more

Kinross Gold sees US$2.7-billion initial capital cost for Tasiast mine – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 30, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

TORONTO – After two and a half years of work at its troubled Tasiast project, Kinross Gold Corp. still has a lot to prove.

On Monday, Kinross released a long-awaited pre-feasibility study on the proposed expansion of Mauritania-based Tasiast. The company called the results “encouraging” and elected to move ahead with a full feasibility study. But analysts and investors were far from thrilled.

Put simply, the study results did not confirm that the project would generate a strong return on investment. Instead, they confirmed a lot of work still needs to be done.

The initial cost to get Tasiast up and running would be US$2.7-billion, according to the study. While the proposed mine would produce roughly 830,000 ounces of gold a year at low costs, the estimated net present value is only US$1.1-billion at a gold price of US$1,500 an ounce, while the internal rate of return (IRR) is a meagre 11%.

That is a low IRR for such a large and high-risk project, especially given that the assumed gold price is higher than the current one. At lower gold prices, analysts estimated that the numbers get significantly weaker.

Read more

Mugabe threatens expropriation of foreign mining assets – by Geoffrey York ((Globe and Mail – April 25, 2013)

Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — Just when Zimbabwe’s battered economy seemed to be turning a corner, President Robert Mugabe has fired a new salvo at foreign investors, threatening to expropriate the assets of Canadian gold miners and other companies.

With its gold and platinum mines and vast diamond fields, Zimbabwe has the potential to be one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies. But it has been severely damaged by a decade of political turmoil, including the seizure of white-owned farms and a controversial “indigenization” campaign to compel foreign companies to sell majority stakes to Zimbabweans.

Now, the government is reported to be drafting a new amendment, allowing it to take controlling stakes in foreign mining assets without paying any compensation.

The amendment, if approved, could affect companies such as Toronto-based Caledonia Mining Corp., which operates the Blanket gold mine, one of the more successful mines in the country. It could jeopardize the recent strong recovery in Zimbabwe’s gold sector, which increased its revenue by 19 per cent last year.

Read more

Vale’s former iron man sets sights on Africa – by Silvia Antonioli and Clara Ferreira-Marques (Reuters U.K. – April 23, 2013)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – At the helm of Brazil’s Vale for a decade, Roger Agnelli turned the conservative iron ore producer into a global heavyweight. Now, he is back in the game.

The 53-year-old, ousted from Vale two years ago, is betting on the world’s hunger for resources, Africa’s potential and his team’s ability to operate where others fear to tread.

“You have a lot of financial guys looking to invest, looking for opportunities,” said the former banker, sitting back in the library of a smart central London hotel. “But guys who go into the middle of the forest, into the middle of the desert to implement a project, those are still scarce.”

Agnelli set up AGN Participacoes, a holding company, shortly after leaving Vale, to invest in biofuel. Last July, he teamed up with billionaire Andre Esteves’ investment bank BTG Pactual to set up B&A Mineracao, a mining group focused on fertiliser, iron ore and copper, in Latin America and Africa.

That $520 million venture – one of a handful of investment ventures set up by an outgoing generation of mining executives – has already put its cash to use, investing $160 million in fertiliser projects and copper.

Read more

China’s President Xi Jinping, a corrupt autocrat’s best friend – by Robert I. Rotberg (National Post – April 22, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

African autocrats absolutely adore China’s President Xi Jinping. At a meeting last month with 13 prominent African leaders in Durban, South Africa, Equatorial Guinea’s hard-fisted President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo led the others in lavishing praise on China. The front page of the weekend China Daily for March 29 trumpeted their obsequieousness and China-Africa friendship.

None of Africa’s despots dare bite the hand that has fed so well, and so consistently. While Chinese support keeps rolling in, these leaders enrich themselves and their inner circles while their people go without.

China directly supports the leaders and enables their continued internal tyrannies by refusing to “interfere” in local politics, by willfully ignoring well-documented trails of human rights violations, by turning a blind eye to egregious corrupt practices, and by protecting presidents such as Zimbabwae’s Robert Mugabe and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir when the UN or other regional organizations threaten to investigate their regimes.

China has also helped to shield Bashir from the consequences of his indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

Read more

Mining sector needs new inspiration – Cutifani – by Geoff Candy (Mineweb.com – April 22, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

In his first speech as CEO of Anglo American, Mark Cutifani lays out a number of the challenges facing his new charge and the rest of the mining sector.

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) – New Anglo American CEO, Mark Cutifani, is not known for pulling his punches. And, his first speech as Anglo American CEO was no different.

Speaking at the group’s Annual General Meeting, Cutifani told Anglo American shareholders that with the group’s share price languishing compared to its peers, business as usual was no longer acceptable.

“As a major diversified company, we need a more focused articulation of the value proposition that will guide our strategic positioning,” Cutifani said, before adding that Anglo American (and the rest of the sector) need to look beyond the mining industry for inspiration.

“To be brutally frank, our industry lags the petroleum, manufacturing and aviation sectors and other more progressive and innovative heavy industry players in terms of operating practices – there is no reason why our industry should not use the best from all of these ‘restless innovators’.”

Read more

Students mining change – by Matt Prepost (Winnipeg Free Press – April 22, 2013)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

GIVING up her computer would be difficult, but Anna MacDonald would quickly toss her cellphone if it meant an end to years of war in Africa over the mineral that helps keep her plugged into the 21st century.

MacDonald will be one of hundreds of Winnipeg high school students taking part in a noon-hour rally at the legislature today, protesting the practices of Canadian mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and calling on the province to pressure Ottawa into legislating change.

“The issue isn’t that we have to get rid of our phones and everything will be fine, this issue is about holding these companies accountable,” said MacDonald, a Grade 12 student in the Met School Justice League at Garden City Collegiate, which is organizing the rally.

“I could probably give up my cellphone, but we can fight this without giving up ourselves. We can use phones and computers to fight this conflict and use them as weapons of change.” In the last decade, Congo has found itself at the epicentre of the trade in the ore coltan, as mining companies around the world sweep in to capitalize on the country’s vast reserves — estimated to be around 64 per cent of the world’s supply. Coltan is mined and stripped down into tantalum, which is needed for everyday electronics, from cellphones to computers to video-game consoles.

Read more

Amplats, Minas Rio expected to be Cutifani’s biggest headaches at Anglo – by Leandi Kolver (April 19, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

Analysts in the South African mining industry believe that new Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani’s biggest challenge might be platinum mining company Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), based on the recent volatility of the sector, plagued by violent strikes and uncertainty.

The significantly overbudget Minas Rio iron-ore project, in Brazil, is a close second. Cutifani replaced former Anglo American CEO Cynthia Carrol on April 3. Mining Weekly reported in January that Liberium Capital analyst Ben Davis had said that the challenges arising from the “structurally defunct” Amplats and the continuing capital cost increases at the Minas Rio project had no easy solutions.

South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation said that Anglo American’s “main issues” centred on capital allocation, project management and operational challenges, which, taking Cutifani’s experience into consideration, could be dealt with.

Amplats posted its first loss last year, with the loss partly stemming from flat metal prices and cost increases of more than 15% a year and from illegal strikes rooted in a turf war between members of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union and the National Union of Mineworkers.

Read more

UPDATE 2-Congo bans exports of copper, cobalt concentrates – by Jonny Hogg (Reuters U.S. – April 17, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

KINSHASA, April 17 (Reuters) – The Democratic Republic of Congo has banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrates to encourage miners to process and refine the red metal within its borders, according to an order from the Mines Ministry.

The order, seen by Reuters on Wednesday, provides companies 90 days to clear stocks before the ban is enforced. It is dated April 5 and signed by Mines Minister Martin Kabwelulu.

Congo is not alone among emerging, resource-rich nations in discouraging exports of concentrates – the intermediate products that feed smelters and refiners – to focus on producing higher-value intermediate or finished products.

These, countries often argue, bring more revenue into state coffers and demand an increasingly skilled workforce. “Little by little, within the next three months, we need to no longer export concentrates,” Kabwelulu told Reuters by text message on Wednesday.

The ban is largely unlikely to affect major producers like Freeport McMoRan and commodities trader Glencore , which already process the bulk of their copper inside the country.

Read more

In Nigeria, a gold rush is poisoning children – by Matteo Fagotto (Toronto Star – April 15, 2013)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Processing gold without modern machinery is leading to “worst lead-poisoning epidemic in modern history.” More than 460 children have died.

BAGEGA, NIGERIA—Every day, a white-dressed figure wanders around the gold-mining site of Bagega, a village in northwestern Nigeria. Lean and middle-aged, perfectly dressed in traditional attire, his black-and-white leather shoes in stark contrast to the bare and dusty feet of the miners, he inspects every piece of gold extracted by the hundreds of men who work under him.

In a space as big as two soccer fields, scores of young men crush, grind and wash gold stones, sheltered from the scorching tropical sun by makeshift, wooden sheds. Some as young as 5, they work from eight in the morning until sundown, united by a common dream: to “hit the jackpot” and become as rich as the “white man,” Alhaji Adamou Tsiko, chairman of the Bagega Gold Miners Association.

Until five years ago, Bagega was just one of the many countryside villages dotting Zamfara, one of the northernmost and poorest states in Nigeria. With nothing more than a rural clinic, a school, a mosque and a few hundred mud houses, the village’s 8,000 inhabitants relied on subsistence farming to feed their children.

“Everyone knew there was gold in the region, but people didn’t care,” says Alhaji Jibril, the village chief, sitting in his “office,” a simple mat under a big tree in front of his house. Then, the economic crisis hit and the price of gold started climbing. In a matter of months, Bagega was at the centre of a new gold rush.

Read more

Expansion of mining in Mozambique bringing benefits and concerns – by Keith Campbell (MiningWeekly.com – April 12, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/home

Mineral production in Mozambique should generate revenues of nearly 20.8-billion meticais (some $680-million, or R6.24-billion) during this year, a technical team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast.

Mozambique’s income from mineral production last year was nearly 14.3-billion meticais (about $470-million, or R4.3-billion), while, in 2011, it was just under 5.1-billion meticais (some $170-million, or R1.5-billion).

In gross domestic product (GDP) terms, the minerals sector accounted for 1.4% of the country’s GDP in 2011, rising to 3.4% in 2012 and predicted by the IMF to reach 4.3% this year. The ramping up of coal exports this year, the execution of major infrastructure projects and the elimination of transport bottlenecks – particularly an increase in the capacity of the railways linking the inland coal-producing Tete region to the coast – should increase the country’s economic growth rate to 8.4% for this year.

International ratings agency Fitch Ratings has noted Mozambique as one of the primary commodity-producing African countries that has gained in importance in recent years (others being Angola, Uganda and Zambia). The country is one of 20 African States whose sovereign debt is now rated by the inter- national agencies (in 1994, South Africa was the only African country to have its debt rated). Being rated encourages foreign investment.

Read more

China Failed Mining Deals Top $45 Billion on Hanlong Bungle – by Helen Yuan and Elisabeth Behrmann (Bloomberg News – April 9, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Sichuan Hanlong Group’s botched $1.2 billion bid for Australia’s Sundance Resources Ltd. (SDL) brings the value of China’s recent failed mining deals to $45 billion, a record that’s prompted stricter Chinese scrutiny of acquisitions.

Chinese companies attempted $107 billion worth of mining takeovers over the past five years, with about $45 billion, or 42 percent by value, of deals ending in failure. Of $562 billion of deals proposed globally in the same period, $180 billion, or 32 percent, didn’t proceed, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The collapse yesterday of the bid for Sundance, seeking to develop a $4.7 billion iron ore project in Africa, comes after a string of failed investments by Chinese companies, including the demise of a $19.5 billion investment in Rio Tinto Group in 2009. Regulators under China’s new leadership team of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang have told state-owned companies that overseas takeovers will face a more stringent approval process.

“Chinese regulators are probably going to allow fewer deals to go through as they become more discerning,” Jonathan Li, a corporate partner at Clayton Utz, said in a phone interview from Melbourne. “The market will come to expect that when a deal involving a Chinese acquirer is announced, all the internal Chinese approvals will already have been obtained.”

Read more

Congo’s mining heartland a volatile “powder keg” – lawmaker – by Jonny Hogg (Reuters U.K. – April 9, 2013)

http://uk.reuters.com/

KINSHASA – (Reuters) – Growing unrest in Democratic Republic of Congo’s copper-rich Katanga province risks scaring off investors and derailing its thriving mining sector, said the lawmaker heading an inquiry into a rebel attack on the provincial capital last month.

Katanga, in the country’s south, has been seen as insulated from the violent unrest that much of the rest of Congo. Billions of dollars have poured into the province to develop mining projects aiming to tap its underexploited mineral wealth.

However, security is steadily eroding as rebel groups, some of them seeking independence for Katanga, sweep down from the north of the province, massacring civilians and emptying villages.

“If nothing is done, Katanga is a powder keg and anything can happen,” Claudel Andre Lubaya, a legislator who is the rapporteur for the parliamentary commission for defence and security, said on Tuesday following a visit to Lubumbashi.

“Persistent insecurity could lead to investors pulling out. That’s why the government must not take only cosmetic measures.”

Last month’s raid saw around 300 fighters penetrate into the heart of Lubumbashi, Congo’s second city and the country’s principal mining hub, before they were stopped by the army’s elite Republican Guard.

Read more

Gold – Full Movie (Mining Movie – 1974)

This information is from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Gold is a 1974 thriller film starring Roger Moore and Susannah York and directed by Peter R. Hunt. It was based on the 1970 novel Gold Mine by Wilbur Smith. Moore plays Rod Slater, General Manager of a South African gold mine, who is instructed by his boss Steyner (Bradford Dillman) to break through an underground dike into what he is told is a rich seam of gold.

Meanwhile he falls in love with Steyner’s wife Terry, played by York. The film was only released as part of a double bill in the United States and is nowadays notable only as a period piece, being part of a propaganda effort to make Apartheid South Africa look ‘glamorous’ to European and American audiences.

Plot

The film begins with a tunnel collapse at the Sonderditch mine, in a scene that establishes the courage of Slater and his chief miner, ‘Big King’, and the bond of trust between them. This is contrasted with the contempt with which some other white managers treat the black miners.

Read more

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart: “CEOs must listen and visibly engage” – Critical Resource – January 2013

Critical Resource specializes in political, sustainability and stakeholder risks facing natural resource investments. We advise senior executives and investors in some of the world’s largest companies. http://www.c-resource.com/

In a wide-ranging interview with Critical Resource, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart – former Chairman of Anglo American and Shell gives his top tips on managing stakeholder expectations, resource nationalism, and other social and political pressures facing resource firms.

CEOs should focus hard on engagement

CEOs need to be open and talk to people. They need to visibly engage and communicate both inside and outside the organisation. This is extremely important. First, CEOs have to listen and secondly, they need to be extremely clear. When a project opens, local people often hope to become wealthy and gain employment. It is important for companies to speak about the realities and explain what is really going to happen.

People need to be told early if they lack the education levels to fill jobs. Be clear about what jobs are likely to be available so as to ground expectations in reality. Companies then need to challenge themselves to raise education levels so that kids who are now eight can think about going to university when they are 18. They need to commit to creating a mechanism and to test progress towards that goal – consulting stakeholders on progress.

Read more