Modern Mining May 2015

COMPANIES

Resolute Mining’s Golden Pride gold mine. He later became a director of Moolmans and man- aged its South African operations. He left Moolmans in 2010 to join Leighton’s mining division – the world’s biggest contract miner – in Indonesia as GM Mining and ended up running Leighton’s entire Asian mining operation, including two gold mines and sev- eral coal mines in Indonesia, a gold mine in the Philippines and a coal mine in Mongolia. He resigned from Leighton last year – the mining division by then had been rebranded as Thiess – to return to South Africa. Colling took up his new position in January this year and spent his first few weeks visiting all the MCC sites in order to gain a thorough understanding of the company’s operations. Explaining his vision for the company, he emphasises that his goal is not for MCC to be the biggest mining contractor in South Africa, just the best. “To be the best we need to not only give returns to our shareholders but also delight our clients by providing an efficient and economic mining service,” he says. Elaborating on MCC’s relationships with its clients, he notes that true partnerships are now called for. “There was a time when you would win a contract and that was the end of the story. You would do what you were paid for without any thought of adding any real value. Those days are now gone. The commodities down- turn has left most of our clients under pressure and we need to recognise this fact and work

closely with them to ensure that their projects remain viable. Ultimately, the success of MCC depends on the health of its customer base. There’s no point in MCC making profits if its clients are making a loss. That’s not sustainable over the long term.” Since taking over as CEO, Colling has changed the leadership at some sites but says that in general he has not had to make any sweeping changes to the management struc- ture at MCC. “We have excellent people within the organisation – they just need the right leadership and it’s my task to give them the clear direction they need and to put in place a strategy that everyone understands.” He adds that he has no intention of micro-managing his contract managers. “I’m a firm believer in empowering people. If you believe that some- one’s the right person for the job, then you need to give them the freedom to make a difference.” Colling concedes that the present market is extremely difficult and notes that competition is so fierce that it is not uncommon to see over 30 contractors at a site inspection. “This pres- ents us with a dilemma. On the one hand, you don’t want to ‘buy’ work. On the other, you’re not going to win contracts unless you put in very keen prices. So really the challenge for us at MCC is to make sure that we contain our costs and operate extremely efficiently so that we are in a position to put in competitive bids and yet still remain profitable. This is precisely what we’re doing and we’re currently putting

Centre: A 650-ton Liebherr 996 excavator loads a Cat 793 truck at the Benga site in Mozambique. Below: MCC apprentices in training. The group has several thousand employees and operates extensive in-house training programmes.

May 2015  MODERN MINING  29