Mining and Exploration

Mutanda, with operations in Katanga, is seen as one of Glencore's key growth assets in Central Africa's copper belt and the cash purchase sees the mining and commodities trading major acquire the remaining 14.5 percent indirect equality in the copper and cobalt producer.  

If any proof were needed to support the belief that Africa has become one of the world’s epicentres for mining success over the last decade, one arguably needs to look no further than Randgold Resources. An Africa-focused gold mining and exploration company, it has been the architect behind a host of major discoveries to date in Mali, the Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

In 2006 when he seriously started to sell his conviction that Greenland would be the next game-changer in the global supply chain for minerals, Rod McIllree found that the investment community in his native Australia shared neither his enthusiasm nor his outlook. In Australia not many people had heard of the Ilimaussaq Complex right at the southern tip of Greenland, which had been investigated by geologists from Greenland’s ‘mother country’ Denmark for decades and had been found to be rich in uranium.

While mining companies are no strangers to volatility, 2013 stands out as a year of particularly significant shifts. Slower demand out of China and ongoing economic weakness in other parts of the world pushed down commodity prices and threatened to tip certain commodities into over-supply. Despite this softness, both operational and capital costs continued to rise and governments in many jurisdictions continued to demand outsized contributions from the natural resources sector.

The report predicts that employment in the mining sector will rise by 7.4 percent over the next four years, with the oil and gas sector providing the largest number of new jobs. However, with this comes the need for new skills to be adopted amongst the workforce.

A family owned and run business, Industrias Correagua was founded almost 60 years ago by one Juan Amado. From its inception the main activities of the company included the fabrication of steel products such as roofing material, gas tanks, and speciality projects such as silos, large tanks, flagpoles and bridges, as well as construction. What has remained consistent over the last six decades is the company’s on-going desire to be innovative, utilise new technologies, and identify and harness the potential of new and emerging products.

Located in the Canadian Shield of northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, Canada, the Athabasca Basin is the world’s leading source of high grade uranium and currently supplies approximately 20 percent of all that used across the planet. Covering some 100,000 square kilometres of Saskatchewan, and a small portion of Alberta, the surface of the basin consists of sandstone sediment varying from 100 to 1,000 metres in depth. It is at the base of this sandstone that uranium ore has been mostly found since it was first discovered in the region in the 1940s.

GEG’s fourth acquisition in Australia cements the country as its largest market outside of the UK.

In taking on Cunningham Construction from its New Zealand parent company GEG has not only captured the expertise of a prominent resource management provider to Australia’s mining sector, specialising in scaffolding and rigging, but also added an additional A$13 million in turnover to its A$100 million Australian portfolio.

Phalaborwa in Limpopo Province holds reserves of some 2.5 billion tonnes of phosphate-bearing ore, or five percent of proven world phosphate rock reserves. The Phalaborwa complex, within which Foskor’s operation is situated, is a geological intrusion caused by sub-volcanic activity approximately 2,000 million years ago. The complex is unique as it is host to many valuable minerals, the most relevant of which are phosphate, copper, zirconium, iron and vermiculite.