Modern Mining October 2015

COVER STORY

MCC awarded R3,6 billion MCC Contract Mining & Plant Rental (MCC) has been appointed as the mining contractor for the new Nsele opencast coal mine in Mpumalanga and is expecting to move onto site shortly. According to Justin Colling, CEO of MCC, the first five years of the contract are likely to represent R3,6 billion worth of turnover for the company. As he says, “Nsele is a very welcome addition to our order book given the extremely tight conditions in the mining industry at present.” Modern Mining recently spoke to Colling and Heine van Niekerk, a Director of Nsele’s owner, Delta Mining Corporation (DMC), to learn more about the mine, its scale and the scope of MCC’s involvement.

F ormed in 1972, MCC is a division of the plus R9-billion-a-year Eqstra group and accounted for approxi- mately 42 % of Eqstra’s revenues in FY 2015. While it ranks as one of the biggest opencast mining contractors in South Africa, over the past several years it has not performed to its full potential. Colling was appointed as CEO at the beginning of this year, his brief being to reinvigorate the opera- tion. While he acknowledges that there is still much work to be done, he points out that MCC is now starting to operate very efficiently. “We don’t have a single loss-making contract on our books and for FY2015 our operating profit was R308 million, which was nearly 29 % up on the previous year.” One of the biggest problems facing all min- ing contractors currently is standing machines. “We have about 6 % of our asset base unutilised

Justin Colling (Left), CEO of MCC, pictured with Heine van Niekerk (centre) and Pieter Wiese, both directors of Delta Mining Corporation, at MCC’s Midrand premises.

18  MODERN MINING  October 2015