Anglo's restructuring should not affect South Africa

The announcement of radical restructuring by Anglo American should have very little impact on South African operations, says Franz Stehring, divisional manager responsible for the mining sector at the trade union UASA.

The issue of radical restructuring and the whole debate around solvency versus liquidity started as far back as 2013. The process of restructuring consisted of three easy identifiable steps:

Mechanisation became the buzz word, i.e. the Mokgalakwena example.
Due to the labour intensiveness of the Rustenburg Platinum Mines, they were delisted and it is now in the final process of being sold to Sibanye.
Anglo American Coal has embarked on a similar process in thermal coal, Eskom mines and the export mines.

International operations

"The shedding of jobs and the retention of an estimated 50,000 jobs worldwide should in our opinion affect mainly the international operations of Anglo American," says Andre Venter, spokesperson for UASA.

"As far as we are concerned the process of restructuring the South African operations has been completed where we lost an estimated 7,000 jobs at the different divisions platinum, coal and other metals. The latter operations are now responsible to drive down costs in order to remain competitive with international producers.

"We do not foresee any further formal restructuring on the cards, other than employees leaving the service through natural attrition," Venter concludes.