Modern Mining July 2016

COAL

junior coal miner, and – before that – served as GM at a number of coal operations owned by BHP Billiton Energy Coal South Africa, includ- ing Middelburg Mines, Khutala and Optimum. Explaining his management philosophy, Sulaiman says that one of his priorities has been to ‘corporatise’ Wescoal and move it away from its ‘family business’ origins. “We’re a listed entity and we need to follow the best modern corporate and operational practices in every aspect of our operations. Most of all, we need to make our business predictable and sustainable with a clear-cut strategy in place which is understandable to our employees, our investors and our customers.” He adds that in respect of mining, Wescoal’s ambition is to be the pre-eminent junior player. “Mining is not complicated,” he says. “The fundamentals are well understood and our goal is to perform those fundamentals better than anyone else.” Sulaiman is well aware of the need for Wescoal to be fully BEE-compliant – and indeed to go beyond the normal compliance level and meet the ’50 plus 1’ target that Eskom has now set for new suppliers. “Last year we were 30 % black-owned and this figure has now increased to over 40 % and we’re on course to achieve in excess of 50 % black ownership by the end of the year,” he notes. Looking specifically at Elandspruit, Sulaiman says that the Wescoal mining team can take credit for having delivered the ‘green- field’ mine in a short period of time in an adverse economic environment – all at a capi- tal cost of around R250 million (including the cost of acquiring the resource). “We have been planning the mine for

at approximately 3 Mt/a on an annualised basis. “This is an excellent figure but it is just the start,” he says. “Our longer term goal is to increase our capacity to 8 Mt/a. Our pres- ent resource base – which is around 47 Mt – is inadequate to support this level of production on a sustainable basis so we are constantly on the look-out for possible acquisitions of either companies or properties and indeed are already in talks with various parties.” He adds that Wescoal is primarily a supplier of thermal coal to Eskom but has aspirations to diversify its revenue streams by not only developing a wider domestic customer base but also achieving up to 1 Mt/a in export sales (as opposed to the roughly 205 000 t/a currently exported). “With our low cost structure com- pared to many other international producers, we believe we are very competitive and we will be looking to particularly target the Indian mar- ket, where there is considerable demand for the type of coal we produce.” Sulaiman was appointed CEO of Wescoal Holdings in April this year, after serving as Acting CEO since early 2015. He has a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town and, prior to joining Wescoal, worked at BHP Billiton, not only in South Africa but also Chile, Turkey and Australia. He leads a young team open to new ideas and fresh thinking although this has not been at the expense of experience. Wescoal Mining, for example, is headed as CEO by Dutch Botes, a qualified mining, electrical and mechanical engineer, who has a long plus 37-year track record in (mainly) coal mining. Prior to join- ing Wescoal, he was CEO of Umcebo Mining, a

Wescoal Processing now has the capacity to treat up to 200 000 tons of ROM a month.

24  MODERN MINING  July 2016