Joshua Ngoma, CEO of Tranter Holdings (Pty) Limited, talks to Jayne Alverca about his desire to move beyond making a good profit and contribute to a lasting improvement in the economic conditions and livelihoods of the people of Southern Africa.
When Joshua Ngoma became the founding CEO of Tranter Holdings in August 2007, he brought with him a wealth of experience as a mining engineer. However, his ultimate vision and that of his co-shareholders was more far-reaching. Southern Africa has some of the world’s richest mineral deposits and he believes these assets, properly used, hold the key to transforming the regional economy and improving the lives of millions of people who remain impoverished.
Tranter Holdings is owned by four individuals, Sipho Nkosi, Humphrey Mathe, Mxolisi Mgojo and Joshua Ngoma himself through their family trusts. The four of them were brought together by Nkosi in 1999 when they, together with a broad-based black economic empowerment group, were involved in the establishment of Eyesizwe Coal that now controls Exxaro, a diversified mining company.
Nkosi is the current CEO of Exxaro, and Mgojo is the executive general manager for Exxaro’s Coal Division. Mathe used to be the executive general manager for Corporate Services at Exxaro and later became CEO of Scinta South Africa, before coming to join Ngoma at Tranter in June 2010, where he is CEO of Tranter Exploration, the operating resources division of the Tranter Group. Ngoma moved out of Eyesizwe Coal in April 2005, just before it merged with the coal division of Kumba Resources to form Exxaro, and went to Anglo Platinum as group manager of New Mining Technologies, where he was in charge of Anglo Platinum Group’s development and implementation of new mining technologies.
Through the experience they gained while building Eyesizwe Coal and later Exxaro, Ngoma and his fellow shareholders learnt the intricacies of conducting business in the South African business landscape. They created the Tranter Group of companies from nothing (and with very little money) but a big vision three years ago, to the company it is today. In their discussion, Ngoma’s colleagues felt he was in a better position to set up the running of Tranter, and he took up the challenge with pleasure. So in August 2007, he left Anglo Platinum and set himself up as a one man team in the centre of Sandton and built the rest of the team bit by bit, with his three colleagues continuing to support him at a strategic level.
Ngoma explains that Tranter Holdings was formed with the overriding goal of facilitating the creation of sustainable economic empowerment for the people of the SADC region. Tranter is therefore an empowering company, rather than an empowerment company. “None of our subsidiaries have external debt: most of the activities have been financed by Tranter Holdings. All our operating business interests generate a profit, but it is more important to us that our business activities have the capacity to improve people’s lives. Our view within Tranter is that this country and this region belong to all the people who live here and we aim for a totally inclusive approach. For this reason, we go beyond the standard Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment [BBBEE] approach and prefer to refer to Broad-Based Economic Empowerment—which means we reach out to everyone.”
Registered in South Africa, Tranter has two principal areas of activity. Through a series of investment companies, it has a focus on identifying and developing mineral resources, with a particular interest in supporting investment opportunities for new broad-based regional groups that would otherwise have had no chance of participating in the economy of the region, such as women, local communities and its own employees.
Tranter Gold (Pty) Limited was formed as a vehicle to invest in Great Basin Gold Limited. Tranter has a controlling interest in the consortium and was instrumental in the selection of the other parties involved, who all have objectives that include the empowerment of local people. Tranter Gold’s interest in Great Basin Gold is through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), Tranter Burnstone. Great Basin Gold has two gold projects, the Burnstone Mine project in South Africa, and the Hollister Mine project in the US, with further interests in Mozambique and Tanzania. Then there is Tranter Kismet, a BBBEE company which has a 12 per cent shareholding in Wits Gold, which has a number of early stage gold and uranium projects. A women’s group within Tranter Kismet holds a third of the shares.
The group’s other services activities are conducted through a subsidiary, Tranter Energy and Mining Services. This is a wholly-owned engineering and services company focused on manufacturing and supplying mining equipment and other services. A manufacturing division, Tranter Rock Drills, fabricates a range of mining products such as pneumatic rock drills and hard rock tools.
“When Tranter Rock Drills was formed two years ago, we decided not to look for passive investors, and we wanted to move beyond simple compliance with government directives concerning BBBEE. Our response was to opt for a co-ownership approach in which all of our fellow employees are shareholders. We did not want passive investors waiting for dividends to come in while the people toiling to create the value in the first place got nothing beyond a basic wage. Our business entities have been designed to directly benefit the people who make their existence and success possible,” explains Ngoma.
“The ‘Tranter way’ is about people, how we interact with each other and how we treat each other, knowing that we have much more that unites us than that which divides us,” he continues.
Ngoma summarises the Tranter way as being focused on five principles. “First is people-centredness. Our people are at the centre of our business; so, we make sure we look after them well, that we develop them to the highest level possible and that we treat them with dignity and respect. Second is teamwork, which is our strength. We all work as a team, with one common goal in mind, and that is to grow our business and equally benefit there from.
“Third, is integrity,” he continues. “The Tranter business is built on a foundation of honesty and fairness. We do that inside our own business, and with other stakeholders outside our business. Fourth is performance excellence: we are performance-driven. We want to be the best in our industry; we don’t want to come second best. So, in the way we produce our products, and in the way we service our customers and in the way we deal with all other stakeholders, we strive to be world-class.
“Fifth is innovation: we embrace new ideas from every level of business. More ideas are better than few. We strive to find better ways of doing our business and these ideas are encouraged to come from anywhere within our organisation. The ideas that come from the floor are usually the best, so we bring them to the fore and share them, and use them to enhance our business performance. Because the people who work for Tranter also have ownership, it means they are prepared to strive harder so we can match a superior product with a superior service proposition and extend the benefits outside the company to all our stakeholders, like suppliers and customers.
“It is easy for us to offer a superior product because we share the same DNA as our partners in the mining industry. We understand exactly what they require based on long experience. Again though, it gives us an opportunity to move beyond simple compliance in terms of the safety of our equipment,” he says.
To this end, the company has pre-empted new legislation due to come into effect in 2013 which limits noise emissions from drilling machinery. “We have not waited for it to become compulsory because we think the health of the people who use our equipment is critical and so we have moved early to reduce the noise levels of our drills.”
Tranter Rock Drills is already selling mining equipment all over the world and has a growing reputation in North and South America. Now Ngoma is keen to add more services and there are plans to add environmental and geological divisions to the company.
A subsidiary, Tranter Exploration (TEX) is already in place in the SADC region. This company’s focus is primarily based on the identification of economically viable prospects from early stage existing portfolios and new projects. These projects are then brought up the value curve in the most efficient way, according to their potential.
Tranter Exploration is already active in Zambia, where it has partnered with the local people to bring empowerment to the country; and Ngoma sees the possibility of opening an additional office in the near future in Zimbabwe, where Tranter already has mineral assets. “We have learned a lot opening a new office in Zambia and it has given us a sound model which we can now replicate in other countries. The same principles of co-ownership are in place and we now have the knowledge and understanding to create other business entities along the same lines,” he explains.
“Unlike most businesses, which exist solely to make a lot of money for a small group of investors and work on competitive principles, we are convinced we can achieve greater success if we empower other regional stakeholders in the mining industry and we are prepared to take risks with our resources and energy towards achieving that goal. By working together we can achieve a critical mass and something greater than the sum of our individual parts that will alleviate poverty and improve the lives of the people here.
“In the long-term as we expand across the region with new services, we plan to use the proceeds generated through mining to create other non-related business outside of mining and mining support services. This will lead to a more diversified economy and a lasting and sustainable economic legacy when the finite mineral reserves we have eventually become exhausted,” he concludes. www.tranterholdings.com
