Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: The new head of AngloGold this week highlighted the company’s commitments to ongoing investment in South Africa.

Creamer: Yes, the new CEO Kelvin Dushnisky, formerly of Barrick in Canada is now running our operation here, which is primary listed in Johannesburg, AngloGold Ashanti.

He gave the assurance that there were commitments for continued spending in South Africa. He spoke of phase two of the development of the world’s deepest mine, that is Mponeng gold mine in Gauteng saying that that would be considered very soon. We see that a lot of investment going into Ghana. We also see that the South Africans are very slack in getting contracts there.

The mining contract which is worth about R5-billion at Obuasi in AngloGold Ashanti, which of course is a very much South African operation, has gone to virtually the Australians, Australians and more Australians. So, although we are very African here sitting on a sub-continent we need to realise that the Australians are more African when it comes to winning contracts in Africa.

Kamwendo: A widespread merging of gold-mining companies is on the cards to help the struggling industry win back investment.

Creamer: Gold mining has become virtually irrelevant, because of the poor returns that have been given and South Africa has been hit hard by that. But, what is happening now is that people are saying the ‘c’ word, consolidation. We need to consolidate this gold here, because the big investors are no longer coming to gold and it has become an indexing situation.

This has been highlighted by the merger now of Randgold and Barrick. Randgold, of course, had tremendous South African roots, but is listed in London. Its shareholders have gone crazy about the this fantastic merger, which shows you that the market is ready for consolidation of gold mines.

You could see the shares lift 29% of Randgold. Barrick shares up 23%. Overwhelming support from all the shareholders, which means that this is something that the market wants, because of the poor performance of gold. We can see that even we had to approve this in South Africa, because both groups through Randgold and also Acacia of Barrick, they use our Rand Refinery to refine their gold.

Thank goodness we have still got some connection. They then had to get approval from our competition authorities, who also gave this a big immediate thumbs up.

Kamwendo: Anglo American this week committed itself to creating five non-mining jobs for every one mining job and supporting education from early childhood development to tertiary level.

Creamer: It is amazing how people orientated and how planet orientated these big mining companies have become and for good business reasons, because if they don’t, they run into big trouble normally.

You can see that there is a sincere determination now to have 100 schools supported by Anglo American going through from early childhood development all the way to the tertiary level. They are also saying that for every one job they create that is mining related, they want to create five jobs outside the mining, for the community. So that will be fantastic if that target can be met.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.