Modern Mining May 2015

COMPANIES

MCC pushes the reset button MCC, one of South Africa’s best known opencast contract mining companies, has a new CEO at the helm. He is Justin Colling, who has notched up almost 25 years in the contract mining field and whose brief is to reinvigorate an organisation that has seen some loss of market share. He says that he has pushed the reset button on the MCC business. “We need to get back to doing the basics right,” he says. “Contract

mining is in many ways a straightforward business but we often complicate it needlessly. By just putting the focus back where it should be, we’re already starting to see results.”

P art of the JSE-listed Eqstra Group, MCC (or MCC Con- tract Mining & Plant Rental, to give it its full name) has now been in business for over 40 years – it was started in 1972 as a plant hire company – and owns and operates one of the largest fleets of mining and construction equipment in Africa. It diversified from plant hire into mining in the early 1980s and contract mining now accounts for the bulk of its annual turnover of approximately R4,7 billion a year. While MCC is currently operating profitably (it recorded a R6 million profit before tax in the six months to 31 December 2014), the returns it has been delivering over the past couple of years have not been impressive given its asset

base, as Colling readily acknowledges. “Clearly we’ve got work to do and we’re busy with a recovery plan. We’ve let ourselves down but the good news is that there is not too much that is wrong with the company as it has the right people in place, the right systems in use and the right equipment in its fleet,” he says. A civil engineer by training, Colling – if one looks at his track record – is the almost per- fect choice to lead MCC. He joined Moolmans (now Aveng Moolmans) in 1992 and went on to spend 18 years with the group, which is gen- erally recognised as being the largest open-pit mining contractor in Africa. Most of the con- tracts he worked on were within South Africa but he was also based in Tanzania for sev- eral years, running the Moolmans contract at

Justin Colling, CEO of MCC Contract Mining.

Below: MCC machines, including a Liebherr 984 excavator and a TR100 mining truck, working at the Karowe diamond mine in Botswana (photo: Lucara).

28  MODERN MINING  May 2015