Nickel in demand

BUSINESS EXCELLENCE
Aug 2014 | www.bus-ex.com
North American Nickel
Punta Cana
International Airport
MONTHLY EDITION
Adrok
Vale Canada
Nickel in demand
With demand for nickel on the up and prices 30 percent higher
than six months ago Vale is sitting on highly strategic resources

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contents
“http://yumpu.com/action/page?page=22”
8
Recruitment
Hiring trustworthy
directors
We keep hearing in the news about
directors whose standards fall below
that which was expected of them.
How can an organisation minimise
the risk of such people emerging?
14
operations
Employee engagement,
retention and
communication
Creating company engagement
drives employee retention. Retaining
great employees keeps hiring
and training costs low. Retaining
employees can only be achieved with
consistent and effective employee
communication.
20
operations
The information Olympics
Spreadsheet use is a habit that
many commodity traders find hard
to break. But the tools that proved
adequate for running a trading
operation a decade ago are no
longer fit for purpose
14
20
26
operations
Top tips for making your
meeting more productive
By focusing on meeting productivity,
individuals and businesses can
greatly reduce time wastage.
4
[ Aug 2014 ] BE monthly

Be monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
30
leadership
Why leaders need
to ask for feedback
Leaders who ask and receive
feedback can utilise it as a
vital ingredient for their own
development.
30
34
strategy
NED: The first 100 days
With the increased focus on the role
and accountability of Non-Executive
Directors it seems that their whole
mindset needs to change along with
the other board members,
expectations.
34
38
technology
Managing the
Cybersecurity Challenge
- Boards must be able to
hack it!
With the increasing occurrence of
cybersecurity breaches, what must
executives do to find the optimum
formula to prevent future violations.
42
Executive insight
Neil Ritson - CEO,
Leni Gas and Oil
Neil discusses his biggest achievements,
learning from past mistakes and who
inspires him professionally.
BE monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 5

contents
46
70
Alacer Gold
Sulphide and oxide
in golden harmony
Alacer operates the
world-class Çöpler
gold mine that
produced a record figure gold during
2013: this is the company’s primary
asset and of strategic importance for
Turkey’s growing mining industry.
46
mining & minerals
Vale Canada
Nickel in demand
With demand for nickel on the up
and prices 30 percent higher than
six months ago Vale’s operations in
Canada is sitting on highly strategic
resources.
78
Central
Rand Gold
All that
glitters is gold
By utilising
innovative methods
and technologies Central Rand Gold
is bringing commercial gold mining
back to the City of Johannesburg.
energy
54
North
American
Nickel (NAN)
Put a lot more
nickel in
The nickel resource
NAN expects to define could be a
game changer for the countries that
depend on this vital mental.
88
TRESCA
Lighting up the
isthmus
Guatemala’s
energy network
is undergoing a
revolution that is bringing power
to the Central American country’s
remote communities.
62
Adrok
Exploring new
possibilities
Over the last
twelve months
Adrok has
experienced significant gains to its
presence in key North American
markets and its acceptance into
important sectors of industry.
96
Geothermal
Development
Company
(GDC)
A vision for
Kenya’s future
Electricity derived from geothermal
resources will play a key role in
Kenya achieving its Vision 2030
objectives. Responsibility for this
rests on the shoulders of the GDC.
6
[ Aug 2014 ] BE monthly

Be monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
104
138
Primefuels
Fuelling growth
Primefuels has
taken advantage of
every opportunity
to provide a much
needed logistics service across East
and Central Africa and has grown
into a partner for major mining,
aviation and O&G customers.
104
118
128
transport & logistics
Punta Cana
International Airport
Welcoming passengers to paradise
Punta Cana International Airport
has grown to become not only
the Dominican Republic’s leading
destination for travel, but also one of
Latin America’s premier airports.
CEPA
Eyes to the east
CEPA has the
job of seizing the
opportunity to
transform the new
Port of La Unión Centroamericana
into a Central American logistics and
distribution hub.
DHL Nigeria
Delivering growth
to Nigeria
DHL has been
present in Nigeria
since 1979. Today
its unrivalled service and expertise
is helping to drive Africa’s largest
economy to new heights of prosperity.
146
152
158
Tata Zambia
A deep
partnership
The Tata group
has a long-standing
association with
Zambia which it chose many years
ago as its gateway into Africa.
Quattro
Driven to succeed
From a single
eight seat minibus,
Quattro has grown
into one of Zambia’s
most important transportation
businesses, proving along the way
that hard work and perseverance can
see anyone achieve their goals.
manufacturing
Kansai
Plascon
Why green is more
than just a colour
With a legacy dating
back 125 years,
Kansai Plascon not only remains one
of South Africa’s premier companies,
but also one that committed towards
a sustainable, environmentally
considerate future.
BE monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 7

Hiring trustworthy
directors
We keep hearing in the news about directors
whose standards fall below that which was
expected of them. How can an organisation
minimise the risk of such people emerging?
Words by Stephen Archer
8
[ Issue 83 ] BE Monthly

Recruitment
Hiring the right people is immensely
complex – it is no surprise that so
many mistakes are made. Getting
recruitment right will pay huge dividends,
but is enough rigor applied to the process?
Though luck will play its part, businesses
need the right people to be available and
attracted to your organisation. If there are
two things that are critical it is to assess
people’s values and leadership.
Values must come first. Underlying
nearly all the failures of directors will
be inappropriate values. These are
the things that define how a person
behaves and in turn, the culture of the
organisation. Values also have a big
part to play in the way that a person
‘fits’ an organisation. They may have a
different style or character to that which
you imagine and may even have a slight
mismatch of background and experience;
but the values must come first. Always.
Remember, ‘hire the smile, and train
the skill’ – the same simple rule applies to
values. ‘Hire the values, train the expertise’.
Values are the inner beliefs, the things that
define behaviour in individuals. They define
how people approach work and how they
relate to colleagues – and in a director they
define how they behave as leaders. They
can and should be defined, but rarely can
this be achieved with a five-point list that
is hung in reception; these speak to an
aspiration, designed by committee.
So how do you define the values that
you seek in a new recruit? It is not as hard
as it may sound.
The starting point is analysis of what
constitutes the existing organisational
culture – the blend of beliefs and
behaviours that makes the people
effective and the company successful.
Do not treat this lightly – in competitive
markets the most important differentiator
that you have will be your culture and
how employees behave. Those involved
in the recruitment process must use this
defined value set as a basis for candidate
assessment in the interview process.
They need to ensure that candidates are
assessed in a balanced and objective
manner. It sounds obvious, but candidates
can all too easily be seized on with too
much enthusiasm by senior colleagues
when they see the experience on paper.
HR and other directors should be looking
beyond experience to ensure that the
personal fit is matched.
In addition to the formal processes,
there are two other ways to assess
candidates. Firstly, telephone them at
home, out of hours. Catching people off
guard and away from the mentality of
the interview ‘performance’ can be very
revealing. Heed the findings because these
often represent the real person.
Secondly, ensure that many other
people in the organisation meet the
candidate before they are appointed –
especially those that will come into direct
contact. Ask these people for their views.
They will be most revealing and if this
process is used frequently the employees
own empowerment will increase. They will
also help the new director more when they
do arrive and increase the chance of the fit
working and lasting.
About the author
Stephen Archer
Stephen is a UK-based consultant and
business analyst and in 2003 founded Spring
Partnerships LLP. He is a consultant to various
multi-national companies at CEO level,
and has been called the ‘Jeremy Clarkson’
of business speakers, for his amusing and
insightful perspectives on the changing
business environment.
www.spring-partnerships.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 9

Employee
engagement,
retention and
communication
Creating company engagement drives employee retention.
Retaining great employees keeps hiring and training
costs low. Retaining employees can only be achieved with
consistent and effective employee communication
Words by Thomas R. Cutler
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 11

operations
Engaged employees stay with
companies for a long time. They
are part of the company team,
company culture, and company value.
Creating company engagement drives
employee retention. Retaining great
employees keeps hiring and training
costs low. Retaining employees can only
be achieved with consistent and effective
employee communication.
This is not a tautology. Each element
will be examined independently,
yet engagement, retention, and
communication are not mutually exclusive.
All three conditions are required to produce
the best working environment, the best
relationships between management, labor,
vendors, suppliers, and customers.
“To win in the marketplace
you must first win in the
workplace”
This article will expressly consider
how employee engagement, retention,
and communication are most profoundly
impacting the manufacturing and
industrial sectors today.
Former Campbell’s Soup CEO,
Doug Conant, once said, “To win in the
marketplace you must first win in the
workplace.”
Kevin Kruse, a contributor to Forbes
magazine, concluded that engaged
employees leads to higher service, quality,
and productivity, which leads to…higher
customer satisfaction, which leads to…
increased sales (repeat business and
referrals), which leads to…higher levels of
profit, which leads to… higher shareholder
returns.
Workforce magazine cited a manager
of organizational effectiveness and
employee engagement at a Fortune
100 company who suggested, “The
typical organization today views talent
management as three building blocks:
attract, develop, and retain. These are
solid building blocks. The challenge is
that these blocks won’t stick together
unless there is mortar. And that mortar is
employee engagement. A robust, worldclass
talent management process has to
put the mortar between those three key
building blocks.”
Quantitative research reinforces the
relationship among customers, employees,
and the bottom line. The two-decade
classic 1994 Harvard Business Review
article, “Putting the Service Profit Chain
to Work” established relationships among
profitability, customer loyalty, employee
satisfaction, and productivity. The decade
old article from Journal of Applied
Psychology, “Which Comes First: Employee
Attitudes or Organizational Financial and
Market Performance?” found consistent
and significant positive relationships over
time between overall job satisfaction and
financial and market performance (as well
as reciprocal relationships).
These data, while still applicable are
pre-technology when most plant floor
workers are inundated with text messages,
emails, and have been conditioned to
145 character tweets. How information
is translated to create employee
engagement on the manufacturing
workforce has changed and continues to
change at a very rapid pace.
Gallup Consulting proved the critical
role of employee engagement (when
the Q12 Meta-Analysis hypothesis was
tested). The theory was postulated
and confirmed that business-unitlevel
employee engagement has
positive average correlations with the
12
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 13

“job satisfaction plays a big
role in how a given employee
feels about getting to work
each and every day”
business-unit outcomes of customer
loyalty, productivity, and profitability;
research demonstrated negative
correlations with employee turnover,
employee safety incidents (accidents),
absenteeism, and shrinkage (theft).
Employee Engagement Drives
Plant Floor Safety
On the plant floors of manufacturing,
distribution centers, and warehouses are
some of the most dangerous locations
for employees; yet the Gallup research
reports that work floor accidents in
manufacturing improve 62% when
employees are fully engaged.
The Society of Human Resource
Management (SHRM) reported other
safety benefits resulting from high levels
of employee engagement, “Disengaged
employees are five times more likely
to have an accident than fully engaged
employees are, and a whopping seven
times more likely to have a lost-time
accident.”
Engaged Employees
Reduce Absenteeism
According to the Journal of Occupational
Psychology, job satisfaction plays a big
role in how a given employee feels about
getting to work each and every day, even
when they feel ill or disinclined. The cost
is absenteeism is rarely calculated in
OEE (overall equipment effectiveness),
which measures the degree to which a
piece of manufacturing equipment is
performing to capacity. If that machine
has optimal production capacity of 100
units per hour, anything less is lost,
wasted, or unproductive. All the solutions,
technology, data metrics, do not calculate
absenteeism as a rationale for a plant
floor idle machine. A multi-million dollar
machine is measured on speed to ROI
(return on investment), yet when a second
and third shift employee calls in sick that
ROI suddenly takes weeks, months, and
even years longer to recoup the capital
equipment purchase. The operations
managers understand the pain point; cost
of a day’s absenteeism may be more than
a day’s wage of a single employee. Lost
production time, missed delivery dates to
customers, over-time to offset absentees
cannot be overlooked. Absenteeism
is a message to management – healthy
communication is lacking.
Automation is often touted as
the primary driver of productivity
improvement. PDP (People Driven
Performance) Solutions suggests that
employee engagement is a better
benchmark for productivity. Louise
Dickmeyer, PDP Solutions’ President,
suggested, “Engaged employees produce
quality products causing a direct impact
on manufacturers’ bottom line. Increased
employee engagement can be evaluated
by the attention paid to customers,
product quality, colleagues, and
employer’s interests. Engaged employees
are healthier, take fewer sick days, arrive
for work on time more often, spend less
time looking at the clock, and focus more
on work excellence.”
In the manufacturing environment,
plant floor workers who enjoy work are
more likely to recommend the place of
employment to friends, get more work
done on any given day, and are more likely
to remain long-term loyal employees.
14
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
Manufacturing workers with a positive
attitude are less likely to gossip.
Just as engagement is contagious,
so is disengagement, especially when
managers get disengaged. Recent
data revealed that manufacturing
employees reporting to a disengaged
manager are four times more likely to
be disengaged than if working for an
engaged manager. When an employee
is kept in the dark about a manufacturing
organization (current state, future state,
and the big picture), they become more
isolated, less enthusiastic about work
and the employer.
People Driven Performance
Leads to Employee Engagement
Dickmeyer insisted, “When manufacturing
and industrial employees know why their
job exists, why products and services
function in a certain way, and where they
personally fit into the big picture at the
place of employment, they simply do
better work. The quality of everything
they touch improves, and that directly
affects the company’s bottom line.”
Bob Kelleher offered a video titled,
“Employee Engagement, Who’s Sinking
Your Boat?” and there were powerful
takeaways from the presentation, namely
that employee engagement requires
“Engaged employees
produce quality products
causing a direct impact on
manufacturers’ bottom line”
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 15

“employee engagement
requires capturing
employees’ heads...
and hearts, releasing
‘discretionary effort,’
the magic dust of high
performance”
capturing employees’ heads... and hearts,
releasing ‘discretionary effort,’ the magic
dust of high performance. He suggested
that in doing so plant floor workers
are 480% more motivated to succeed
and 250% more likely to recommend
improvements.
Employee Engagement Drives
Employee Retention
The Manufacturing Institute recognized
many U.S. manufacturers are regaining
momentum, yet for years manufacturers
have reported a significant gap between
the skilled labor needed to keep
growing businesses, and the skilled
labor available. Deloitte Consulting LLP
and the Manufacturing Institute have
renewed the Skills Gap Study; the survey
findings are remarkably consistent with
previous Skills Gap studies, with 67% of
respondents reporting a moderate to
severe shortage of available, qualified
workers and 56% anticipating the
shortage to grow worse in the next three
to five years. In addition, the survey
indicates that 5% of current jobs at
respondent manufacturers are unfilled
due to a lack of qualified candidates.
These results underscore the tenacity
of a worsening talent shortage that
threatens the future effectiveness of the
U.S. manufacturing industry.
When asked to look ahead three
to five years, respondents indicated
that access to a highly skilled, flexible
workforce, is the most important factor
in effectiveness, ranked above factors
such as new product innovation and
increased market share by a margin of
20 percentage points.
Manufacturers are concerned about
talent today and into the future.
Manufacturers are having the hardest
time filling skilled production jobs that
fuel their ability to innovate and grow,
even in the face of high unemployment.
Efforts to develop the skills of current
employees are falling, and technology
advancement without a future workforce
puts manufacturers at great risk.
The Manufacturing Institute detailed
that the shortages in skilled production
jobs – machinists, operators, craft
workers, distributors, technicians,
and more – are taking their toll on
manufacturers’ ability to expand
operations, drive innovation, and
improve productivity. Seventy-four
percent of respondents indicated
that workforce shortages or skills
deficiencies in skilled production roles
are having a significant impact on
the ability to expand operations or
improve productivity. Unfortunately,
these jobs require the most training,
and are traditionally among the hardest
manufacturing jobs to find existing
talent to fill.
While recognizing the importance of
recruiting and developing talent, many
manufacturers depend on outdated
approaches for finding the right people,
developing their employees’ skills, and
improving performance. At a time when
finding the right talent for the job has
become so difficult, the spotlight shines
even more brightly on recruitment
16
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
and development efforts. After all, if
manufacturers cannot bring in talent
with the skills needed, steps can be
taken to expand the skills based on
the existing workforce.
Harold L. Sirkin is a Chicagobased
senior partner of The Boston
Consulting Group (BCG), a professor
at Northwestern University’s Kellogg
School of Management, noted in
BusinessWeek, “The average age of a
highly skilled U.S. manufacturing worker
is 56. Now is the time to train the next
generation. With all the unemployed
and underemployed college graduates
now living in their parents’ basements,
we’d be foolish not to recognize this as
a tremendous talent asset. We need to
recruit them and train them to create
the skilled workforce U.S. manufacturing
will need as the baby boomers retire.”
Sirkin offers the notion that retention
requires a shift, “Maybe U.S. factories will
have to change a bit to accommodate
their interests: lattes, rather than
lunch pails. But that’s not a bad thing.”
Dickmeyer at People Driven Performance
suggested that employee retention is
the measure of how long employees
stay with a manufacturing or industrial
company. Although personal reasons
may inspire a skilled plant floor worker
to depart his/her place of employment,
most often these experienced company
employees (often with a decade of
dedicated service to a company) leave
because they do not like where they are
working. The cause might be colleagues,
atmosphere, culture, compensation, the
management, the boss, or any of the
above. Employee engagement activities
raise employee retention within an
organization. Employees stay because
they are more fully engaged and do better
work. Dickmeyer noted, “A high level of
employee engagement will always keep
Louise Dickmeyer,
President of
PDP Solutions
© 2014 PDP Solutions
your staff on board for longer. And a
high rate of employee engagement goes
hand-in-hand with a robust employee
communications solution. A high rate
of employee retention has no downside.
You get better work out of an employee
and for longer, as well as save money on
recruitment costs.”
According to the Corporate
Leadership Council, driving performance
and retention through employee
“a high rate of employee
engagement goes hand-inhand
with a robust employee
communications solution”
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 17

• Engaged employees are 87% less
likely to leave their organizations than
disengaged employees are.
• Employees with lower engagement
levels are four times more likely to
leave their jobs than those who are
highly engaged.
Dickmeyer suggested that companies
perform a value stream map of the time,
effort, and costs to replace a single
plant floor worker. “The whole process
of someone deciding they don’t want
to work for the company any longer,
their departure, interviewing and hiring
a replacement for the position, utilizes
more company time and resources
than most management team members
ever considered. It is wasteful and as
far away from a lean best-practice,”
argued Dickmeyer.
engagement can be easily verified
by relating to the financial impact of
employee retention and employee
engagement. Some of the key findings
cited include:
• 70% of companies say that retaining
talent is their top HR challenge this year.
• 44% of employees in North America
say they may or will leave their current
organization within the next 12 months.
• Losing an employee can cost an
organization up to 213% of the
employee’s equivalent annual salary.
“A high level of employee
engagement will always
keep your staff on board
for longer”
Employee Communication the
Engine that Drives Employee
Engagement and Retention
People Driven Performance (PDP)
Solutions is a software development
company providing an internal, innovative,
and interactive communications system
for manufacturing plant floor employees.
A patented combination of software and
touch-sensitive employee information
kiosks bring vital and important
information to the plant floor in a nondesk
employee environment. As discussed
earlier employee engagement results in
quantifiable productivity improvement.
The impacts of improved internal
communications, via interactive design,
delivers an employee-centric engagement
system driving improved employee
retention, best-practice lean productivity,
and increased bottom-line profitability.
Dickmeyer was adamant that the
efficacy of employee communication has
much to do with how the information
18
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
is shared: “Unlike desktop solutions
promising better engagement,
communication tools must be uniquely
suited to on-the-move plant floor
production employees ensuring a simple
and straightforward way to access key
company metrics and other information.
The result is full participation and
understanding of the functions, status,
and standing of the company. Employee
communication ensures a personal
responsibility for the well-being of
management and colleagues with whom
they work each day.”
Just as plant floor employees may
express fear or resistance when new
automation equipment is brought onto the
plant floor, senior management is equally
challenged by dynamic, interesting, and
frequent communication messaging. Just
as management expects the employee
to adapt to the technology changes,
employees have the right and the need
for effective communication.
Progressive manufacturers are
usually lean, often ISO certified, bestpractice
oriented, utilizing Six Sigma or
Theory of Constraints. These leading
industrial organizations have workforces
keenly aware that consistently poor
communication costs money and
devastates profits.
“Employee engagement drives
financial performance,
and communication is the
cornerstone of an engaged
workforce”
Employee engagement drives financial
performance, and communication is the
cornerstone of an engaged workforce. The
challenge for businesses is to create an
environment where employees understand
why they do the work they do in order to
commit to the company’s direction, strategy,
and goals. Leaders need to tell employees
the plan and employees must be on board
before committing to the results.
Dickmeyer urged, “All manufacturers
must explore products and services
enabling organizations to deliver timely,
news, and real-time performance
metrics to employees on the production
floor. It requires a combination of SaaS
software, variety of display options,
and expert guidance to bring corporate
communications to life…engaging
employees, resulting in creating highperformance
cultures.”
About the author
Thomas R. Cutler
Thomas is the President & CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based, TR Cutler, Inc. Cutler is
the founder of the Manufacturing Media Consortium including more than 5000 journalists,
editors, and economists writing about trends in manufacturing, industry, material handling, and
process improvement. Cutler authors more than 500 feature articles annually regarding the
manufacturing sector. Cutler is the most published freelance industrial journalist worldwide.
trcutler@trcutlerinc.com
@ThomasRCutler
www.trcutlerinc.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 19

The informati
Spreadsheet use is a habit that
hard to break. But the tools that
trading operation a decade ago
Words by Michael Schwart
20
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

on Olympics
many commodity traders find
proved adequate for running a
are no longer fit for purpose
z & Roger Schaffland
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 21

Relying on spreadsheets to compete
in today’s commodity markets
is like running against Usain Bolt
while wearing lead boots – and businesses,
like great athletes, need the best
tools and conditions.
The evidence is hard to refute:
swapping spreadsheets for specialist
commodity management solutions helps
create a winning business that makes
better decisions, faster, and with more
confidence.
Eight reasons to unhitch and make
the switch:
1. Meet new regulatory
requirements
The sense of complacency about
spreadsheets is becoming almost
impossible to sustain in the light of a tough
new regulatory framework. Underpinning
both Dodd-Frank in the US and EMIR in
Europe is the need to increase the amount
of transaction data to be recorded and
stored, speed up its availability, and
deepen the level of detail required. Timely
reporting across all regions and markets is
the minimum requirement to stay on the
right side of the regulator.
Spreadsheets were never developed to
collate and export large, comprehensive
and unified data sets from multiple
sources. They do not easily offer real-time
responsiveness or enterprise-wide visibility.
They do not support current needs for
comprehensive risk mitigation, reporting
and audit requirements and the regulations
are only going to get more onerous;
“Spreadsheets multiply; firms
that rely on one, tend to
rely on a dozen”
businesses need to adopt better toolsets
than spreadsheets to be compliant.
Fortunately, commodity management
vendors have worked closely with
regulators to develop the necessary
features within their solutions so that
organizations can be more compliant.
In contrast, a trading operation run on
spreadsheets is just one fat-finger error
away from a compliance breach, fines and
even jail time.
2. Break down the
corporate silos
Spreadsheets multiply; firms that rely on
one, tend to rely on a dozen. By their very
nature they silo information when having a
portfolio view of total exposure is the only
way to manage risk and make decisions
effectively. A critical spreadsheet with a
single owner/author is an accident waiting
to happen, and it happens frequently,
different people owning or enabling
their own part of the business through
one or more uncontrolled, unsecured
documents has been proven to be “the
weakest link” when it comes to financial
accuracy, regulatory transparency
and risk management.
Trust and transparency is key to the
current/future business model; the use
of spreadsheets is an indication that
information is inadequately shared. The
inevitable lack of data integration between
the number and variety of spreadsheets
usually results in different parts of the
business running and reporting on
incomplete or even inaccurate data
sets. At critical stages of the value
chain the left hand often doesn’t know
what the right hand is doing.
Where a commodity management
system is in place, however, it shows
that integrated, front-to-back, business
processes have been developed, and are
supported by common data and rules. This
22
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
business is more efficient and less prone to
the information stove-piping that plagues
their spreadsheet-dependent rivals.
3. Make the right
decisions every time
Consider all the information that has
to be recorded for each individual deal.
Purchase, sale, and transportation costs;
complex structured transactions, financial
instruments and hedges; contract terms,
collateral arrangements and currency
fluctuations; inventory lists, prices and
schedules, not to mention invoices and
settlement statements. Add to that the
benefit of netting cash-flows across deals,
aggregating exposures to the parent
companies for collateral coverage, and
managing to policy limits. A spreadsheet is
not an effective system of record. It is too
laborious, too disconnected from policy –
and too prone to error.
On the other hand, commodity
management systems can accurately
record all transactions from order through
to cash to create a single, trusted, centrally
available, version of the truth across
all deals, different commodities and
geographies. As these specialist systems
evolved over the past ten years, they
have honed this capability. Smart, nextgen
systems like those available from
commodity management specialist Eka can
provide a single view that helps increase
awareness among senior managers of
how defined strategies are performing,
the potential financial impacts and options
for risk mitigation. Consolidated exposures,
“When deals are captured in
spreadsheets, records of the
associated costs will often
be added separately to the
ERP or financial systems”
cash flow forecasting and single-truth
reporting offer a new level of predictability
and proactivity when it comes to managing
financial performance, which in turn enables
smarter risk taking. It supports real-time
understanding of counterparty credit
risks and exposures, enhances strategic
planning and business-planning processes
and allows for better allocation of resources
and increased operational efficiency.
4. Get a grip on your
real profitability: Pay
for Performance
When deals are captured in spreadsheets,
records of the associated costs will
often be added separately to the ERP
or financial systems. But the final costs
for physical deals in particular can be
significant and vary greatly in real-time.
Fees for transportation, brokerage, and
inspection, plus premiums, demurrage and
invoice adjustments can soon wipe out the
predicted profit of an individual deal.
Spreadsheets have no means to formally
link deals with their costs in a timely manner,
and offer very limited capability for accurate
reconciliations and tracking of trends. In
contrast, commodity management systems
allow traders to record and analyze all-in
costs to ensure a proposed transaction is as
profitable as first appears. They make clear
the full commercial value of a transaction
as it evolves over the life of the deal from
a single report.
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 23

Traders can compare the forecasted
pre-deal costs with actual post-deal costs
to assess real profitability, and can slice
and dice profitability data by trader or,
container, or business unit to support and
improve future-decision making. For a realtime
view of true profitability, commodity
management is crucial.
5. Secure your data
and your business
Spreadsheets are almost always the private
domain of individuals who set them up to
meet an immediate or specific need, with
no thought to the wider demands of system
management or the business need for risk
management best practice. They are by
definition, uncontrolled, free-range tools
which people try to maintain as best they
can despite changing business rules and
“Spreadsheets are almost
always the private domain
of individuals who set them
up to meet an immediate or
specific need, with no thought
to the wider demands of
system management”
market data, but often these owners leave,
forget some part of the logic, or use the
wrong version of the spreadsheet. Thus they
are a huge security risk primarily because
the calculations in those spreadsheets is
are vulnerable to unintentional errors or
purposeful interference. Audit controls are
often insufficient to prevent these data
integrity issues because of the variety and
subtlety of the problem(s).
In contrast, commodity management
systems demand both user and group
security protocols to be established. They
provide for effective user permissions
and access, detailed audit trails, and
management approval of activity. Wellimplemented
commodity management
systems can enforce operational controls
and so reduce opportunities for fraud.
Configurable business rules allow
organizations to instantiate business
processes and risk policies, and to monitor
compliance on a real-time basis through
detailed and logical dashboards and alerts.
6. Overcome the information
management hurdles
For businesses that depend on spreadsheets,
managing data requires Herculean effort.
The accurate monthly closing of the books
is just one example. The number and variety
of sources to be mined, combined and
validated mean that data is often cut and
pasted from one spreadsheet to another,
spreading errors through the organization.
The task then has to be re-invented each
time: with randomly created spreadsheets
involved, there is no repeatable process
– and the end-result is difficult and timeconsuming
to query. And there’s no let up:
as soon as one month’s books are complete,
the information Olympics start all over again
for the next month.
In contrast, commodity management
gives organizational productivity and
accuracy. It reduces the amount of time
24
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
and effort spent on manual reconciliations
of internal and external data. Information
completeness can be ensured and
repeatable processes created to further
reduce the chance of errors rippling through
the organization. Businesses that have made
the transition to commodity management
wonder how they ever managed without it.
7. Secure the best
business results
Smart commodity management systems
give traders and risk managers the ability
to simulate new transactions in the current
book, analyze multiple scenarios and then
optimize portfolios and execute on the
best outcomes. Although spreadsheets
can provide some of this functionality
with some advanced programming, the
circumstances in which spreadsheets are
normally deployed suggest it is unlikely.
More to the point, commodity
management systems provide this outof-the-box
and in a multi-user, real-time
environment. Add in advanced analytics
that are embedded in next-generation
solutions like Eka, and traders suddenly
have real-time access to accurate P&L,
VAaR, and mark-to-market exposures.
These, and other metrics, can be
continuously updated, with optimized
scenarios being ranked to allow a trader
to quickly identify the most profitable
outcomes before entering a deal.
8. Keep stakeholders on side
Like it or not, there is no escaping the
corporate governance agenda. Commodity
management technologies have evolved
to fill this need and are increasingly seen
by investors, creditors, rating agencies
and shareholders as an indication that
governance and risk management is being
taken seriously.
The latest incarnation of commodity
management systems have been designed
“The latest incarnation of
commodity management
systems have been designed
from the start to provide
a secure, official and timestamped
version of events”
from the start to provide a secure, official
and time-stamped version of events that
can be verified against external data in
case of audit, research or investigation. It
is a critical design feature of systems like
Eka, rather than an accidental add-on.
Not only do commodity management
systems ensure better, more competitive
business decisions but they also provide
reassurance to the markets on the validity
of all financial statements and disclosures.
This increases confidence at a time
when it has never been more valuable.
Not surprisingly, external and internal
stakeholders like the demonstrable
commitment to transparency that
commodity management systems offer,
as well as the visibility that helps mitigate
multiple types of risk in today’s global and
volatile markets.
About the authors
Michael Schwartz
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing
Officer of Eka
www.ekaplus.com
Roger Schaffland
Managing Principal at Axcelerus, a commodity
advisory and risk management specialist
www.axcelerus.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 25

26
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Top tips for
making your
meeting more
productive
All too often meetings take up an inordinate
amount of time. But by focusing on meeting
productivity, individuals and businesses can
greatly reduce time wastage
Words by Lloyd Snowden
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 27

Every businessman and woman
knows the importance of meetings.
A necessary evil they may be,
meetings are vital for providing and
receiving updates, communicating, planning,
brainstorming and making decisions.
All too often, however, meetings take
up an inordinate amount of time. But
by focusing on meeting productivity,
individuals and businesses can greatly
reduce time wastage. In a business climate
where time is precious, that’s an advantage
many of us can’t afford not to take.
So how do you make sure every meeting
is effective? Follow these simple tips:
1) Always have an agenda
with defined expected
outcomes from the meeting
Good meetings are managed events,
they do not just happen. I am constantly
amazed at how many organisations allow
their most precious resource - their people
- to sit in meetings with no predefined
purpose or outcomes. It is akin to letting
a machine in a factory run idle or produce
parts to no set specification.
Always have a clear agenda and
expected outcomes to ensure the
meeting stays on track and produces
results. This relies on proper meeting
preparation, executing the meeting to
plan, and then good follow-up. A useful
tip in making sure the meeting has been
a success, is to simply ask yourself at the
end of every meeting ‘did we do what we
said we would do?’
“Good meetings are
managed events, they do
not just happen”
2) Assign clear roles
and responsibilities
One way to make sure your meeting
has an agenda, and achieves what
it is supposed to, is to assign clear
responsibilities to the meeting
attendees. Have an allocated meeting
leader to prepare material for the
meeting, who is responsible for making
decisions and designating other meeting
responsibilities, such as taking minutes,
and assigning actions as an outcome.
A facilitator or chairperson, whose role
it is to assist in the preparation, control the
meeting process and keep an eye on the
time, should support the meeting leader.
It is this person who is responsible for
ensuring the meeting stays on course and
achieves the expected outcomes.
Other meeting attendees will then
be expected to generate ideas, provide
recommendations, build on the ideas of
others and add expertise to the meeting.
3) Ask ‘So what?’
Focus on the presentation of information
rather than data. If you include too much
data, significant time is lost whilst the
meeting attendees try to determine
what the numbers mean, or even argue
over them.
Use headlines to tell a story and
get your point across, and make sure
everything passes the ‘so what?’ test,
i.e. that it is contributing to the desired
outcome of the meeting. If it’s not directly
relevant, leave it out.
4) Don’t plan
‘back-to-back’ meetings
The cost of having 9 people sitting in a
room for 10 minutes waiting for a tenth
attendee to arrive so that a meeting can
start will run into £100s.
Multiply that number by the number
of times meetings start late in most
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

operations
organisations and the annual ‘productivity
opportunity’ is significant. One common
cause of late meeting starts I have
observed is the scheduling of back-toback
meetings. The larger the building or
site in which a business operates, the more
problematic this usually is.
For one of my clients it takes 10
minutes to walk from one side of their site
to another. Executives with consecutive
meetings scheduled at different locations
across the site were regularly arriving late
for meetings.
The simple solution this organisation
adopted was to set their meeting calendars
so whilst meetings start on the hour
they are scheduled to finish at quarter
to the hour, i.e. 9am-9.45am rather than
9am-10am. This allows for the 10 minutes
participants may need to get to their next
meeting location.
5) Prevent distractions
Unfortunately poor meeting etiquette
is common. Mobile phones should be
turned off/set to silent and attendees
should be dissuaded from ‘multi-tasking’
during the meeting.
It is impossible to focus on a task at hand
or to “actively listen” during a meeting if
you are typing up an unrelated report or
email on a tablet or laptop.
The chairperson of a meeting must
take on some responsibility for ensuring all
participants remain engaged. If a meeting
wanders off track then attendees disengage.
If individuals don’t need to be there let
them go and focus on some value added
activity elsewhere.
6) Stand up
Where meetings are scheduled for a short
period of time, one way to make sure the
meeting is as productive as possible is to
take away the chairs. ‘Stand up’ meetings
are a great way of maintaining the energy
in the room. Plus, attendees are unlikely to
drag out the meeting if it means standing
up for a longer period!
7) Understand the impact of ‘poor
meeting behaviour’ on others
Naturally, meetings are most productive
when people practice positive meeting
behaviours: contributing, clarifying,
mediating, supporting and facilitating.
In a lot of organisations, however, it is
fairly common for individuals, including
those in very senior roles, to exhibit
negative meeting behaviours - to be late, to
dominate the meeting, or not focus on the
task at hand, for example. Whilst they may
not be aware of the demotivating impact
this has on their peers and subordinates,
it can be very disruptive and counterproductive.
This type of behaviour needs to
be dealt with in a firm, but friendly manner.
Suggest alternative behaviour, utilise
non-verbal contact, i.e. eye contact,
and reinforce positive behaviours. If
necessary, the meeting facilitator should
speak to the individual privately. It can
be useful in this instance to reflect on
the old adage “treat others as you wish
to be treated yourself”. In this period of
increased time pressure, no one wants to
have his or her time wasted.
These are simple tips, but can make a real
difference to the amount of time spent
(and wasted) in meetings, and greatly
improve their effectiveness. Can your
organisation afford not to follow them?
About the author
Lloyd Snowden
Associate at business improvement
specialists, Oliver Wight.
www.oliverwight-eame.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 29

30
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Why leaders
need to ask
for feedback
Leaders who ask and receive feedback can utilise it
as a vital ingredient for their own development
Words by Marielena Sabatier
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 31

No matter how well senior
executives are performing at
work, they all tend to dread their
annual performance review. Whilst many
are trained in the art of giving feedback to
their teams, how do they cope when the
tables are turned on them?
Receiving feedback and acting upon it
is a vital ingredient in the development of
leaders in business today.
A recent study from leadership
development firm, Zenger Folkman 1 , found
that leaders who ask for feedback are
substantially more effective than leaders
who don’t. Leaders who ranked in the
bottom 10% in asking for feedback were
rated at the 15th percentile in leadership
effectiveness. Conversely, those in the
top 10% of asking for feedback from
their employees were ranked in the 86th
percentile in overall leadership ability.
Asking for feedback can give leaders
vital knowledge and understanding of how
they need to improve their performance.
However, it seems that few people really
know how to react to the feedback they
are given. The reasons for this are often
down to low self-confidence. If someone
has gone for a big promotion only to be
rejected, do they really want to know why
they failed to get the job?
However, it is crucial for executives
to find out where they went wrong to
“Asking for feedback
can give leaders
vital knowledge and
understanding of how
they need to improve
their performance”
discover what they could do better in the
future. No matter how senior a person is, it
is important for them to ask for feedback
post interview or when they have an annual
review because everyone has blind spots.
Sometimes feedback can be vague so
it is important to ask the person providing
it to clarify what they are saying using
specific examples.
Executives need to ask the person
providing the feedback what they could
have done differently. This will not only
show they are confident and open,
but most importantly, willing to learn
from experiences and understand what
behaviours they may be presenting that
make others form an impression.
It is important for business leaders
to take feedback too personally or be
defensive about it, although it could be
validated by asking for further feedback
from other people. It can also be helpful
to ask the person giving the feedback
for their advice.
People often dismiss feedback because
they don’t like what they hear or it’s not in
line with the view they have of themselves.
However, being open to feedback, whether
it is positive or negative, will enable a
person to improve their self-awareness
and adjust their behaviour accordingly.
A good example is one particular
client of mine who was told she needed
a new haircut. She was understandably
upset that her hairstyle could affect her
chances of promotion. She reflected on
the feedback and realised that probably
she looked too young, and although she
could not do anything about her looks,
she could behave in a more serious
manner. Sometimes it’s important to look
beyond the comment, and understand
the overall message.
Often people don’t like giving feedback
because they fear they may hurt or upset
the person receiving it. In anonymous
32
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

leadership
written feedback, people tend to be more
honest as they are further removed from
the situation. Similarly, if people request
written feedback they will have more time
to consider what questions to ask. Face to
face it may be more difficult to be “curious”
without being defensive, however, it gives
the opportunity to ask qualifying or
clarifying questions.
One way leaders can
maximise the potential
of face to face feedback
is to give the person
conducting the review
the questions in advance
to give them time to think
them over properly. The
questions should not be
vague but targeted at
relevant areas such as,
‘What’s one thing I can
do to improve X?’.
It is worth bearing
in mind that asking
for feedback is only
useful if there is a
genuine intent to act on it and for
executives to take action to work on any
areas for improvement highlighted in the
feedback. Further feedback sessions are
recommended too, to ensure the selfimprovement
measures put in place have
been successful a few months further
down the line.
Adobe, a company of 11,000 employees,
believes so strongly in the importance of
feedback that it has replaced its traditional
performance management system with
a new simple but effective process.
Either an employee or a manager may
request a “check in” every three months.
Before the meeting occurs a group of
employees provides feedback on the
employee’s performance.
The results form the basis of a
conversation about performance
“Being able to ask for
honest feedback is one
of the hallmarks of
a great leader”
improvement and
the goal is to
make coaching
and developing
a continuous,
collaborative process
between managers
and employees.
Since rolling out
the new approach
worldwide Adobe
have experienced a
30% reduction in
voluntary turn over.
Being able to ask
for honest feedback is
one of the hallmarks of a
great leader. Whether choosing to adopt
an official ‘check in’ system like Adobe’s
or taking a more ad hoc approach,
feedback is an important tool in enabling
leaders to be successful in their roles.
1. Zenger Folkman carried out a study of 51,896
executives in December 2013
About the author
Marielena Sabatier
Executive Coach and CEO of Inspiring
Potential works with businesses and executives
to develop and boost their confidence to
improve their performance at work.
www.inspiring-potential.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 33

34
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

NED:
The first 100 days
With the increased focus on the role and accountability
of Non-Executive Directors it seems that their whole
mindset needs to change along with the expectations
from the other board members
Words by Stephen Archer
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 35

In my experience the NED is still seen
as an outsider and NED’s also view
themselves as outsiders. Whilst their
degree of detachment from the day to day
life of a business can be a healthy thing, the
detachment caused by episodic intervention
can be very unhealthy and greatly restricts
the ability of the NED to deliver value and
exercise their governance duties.
The first 100 days is something of a cliche
for executives, but for NEDs it is assumed
that they just step straight in with their
‘experience’; listen in and contribute when
they see fit. For the first 100 days and beyond
to work, the executive board must know 100
percent why the NED is there and what the
NED plans to contribute. Any board must
be serious about taking on an NED and
unless they are it should not happen.
Assuming that the board has accepted
the NED and their role then what should
the NED do?
1. Meet each board member face to face to
understand what their roles are and how
they see their role. This is also the time to
find out the ‘elephants in the room; the
‘sacred cows’ and the underlying strengths
and weaknesses of an organisation that
don’t appear on paper.
2. Meet each board member’s direct
reports or at least some of them to see
where the pressure points are in middle
management. If the organisation is
stressed it will be most apparent at this
level, not, paradoxically at the board level.
3. Spend some days at the ‘coal face’.
Meet a number of people and spend
some time with key new employees and
long standing employees but not those
in between to gain the perspectives on
changes over time and the fresh eyes
of new people. From this the NED
will gain invaluable insight that even
other board members will not have
on the strengths and weaknesses of each
function be it, sales, marketing, finance,
HR, IT, operations, logistics, legal etc.
4. Start as soon as possible testing
the board members with the NED’s
impressions of the organisation from the
inside. This might not sound like the most
popular move but an NED’s authority is
so often weakened because they are not
seen as having a real understanding of
the business.
5. NEDs tend to have specific domain
expertise and be expected to comment on
the technical side of that domain quickly.
However, the NED must gain very quickly
a sense of the strength of leadership by
the board and next levels down.
6. Understand the strategic plan. This is
not just the 12 month business plan, this
is the longer term roadmap of achieving
step changes in commercial performance
and place in the markets. This should be
thoroughly interrogated and challenged
for robustness of examination and thought
for reality rather than fantasy.
“For the first 100 days and beyond to work, the
executive board must know 100% why the NED is there
and what the NED plans to contribute”
36
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

strategy
7. Having learned about the people and
the functions the NED must consider
the operating structure and whether
this is fit for the purpose of meeting the
objectives.
8. The NED must look at the ‘informal
organisation’: the behavioural
norms, patterns of influence and
communications, politics and other
aspects of the team culture. This provides
the framework within which guidance
should be executed and indeed a set of
aspects of the business that may also
need to be challenged even if they are
mostly not spoken about.
9. NEDs should act and think as if they
are full time executives in order to
take the role to the level of suitable
responsibility but stop short of
accountability.
10. Heed the red flags and shout early.
The NED is expected and most able to
anticipate or spot problems early on.
While this can be a tremendous strength,
it can be a double-edged sword if taken
to the extreme. They must refrain from
taking on all the issues and resist the
tendency to be the organization’s saviour.
In the end the executives must listen
and act. This will be most effective when
the NED has spent the first 100 days
establishing knowledge, respect and
understanding.
About the author
Stephen Archer
Business Analyst and director of UK business
consultancy, Spring Partnerships
www.springpartnerships.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 37

Words by Robin M
Managing the cybe
Boards must be
With the increasing occ
breaches, what must e
optimum formula to p
38
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

security challenge -
able to hack it!
urrence of cybersecurity
xecutives do to find the
revent future violations
urray Brown
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 39

The increasing occurrence of
cybersecurity breaches – such
as the recent case at eBay when
it is believed more than 145 million user
accounts were infiltrated – is causing
executives around the globe to seek ever
more sophisticated solutions to prevent
future violations . As they review their
procedures, tighten their operational
environment and add additional levels of
security, finding the optimum formula is
still proving elusive.
Advances in security architecture
and cyber-defence tactics have helped
address some risks, but they are
inefficient and unsustainable when faced
with the more adaptive, embedded and
interconnected capability of the current
threat. Strengthening network resilience
is important but management responses
seem overwhelmingly reactive. The
criminal cyber threat is nimble and intensely
focused and, thanks to its financial success
to date, has the wherewithal to invest
in innovation and scale, often leaving
corporate security trailing in its wake.
Given that the cost of cybercrime to the
UK is currently estimated to be between
£18 billion and £27 billion, it is essential
that boards play a more proactive role. At
an operational level, working on the basis
that they will be faced with a cyber-attack
at some point, leadership teams need to
anticipate the business risk and develop
counter-measures and business continuity
plans which will minimise the disruption.
“we are starting to see the
creation of a new senior role on
the leadership team, that of the
Chief Security Officer (CSO)”
But how do they do this and who should
be in charge of driving the corporate
agenda on cybersecurity?
As boards acknowledge that technology
on its own is not enough, companies need
the addition of strong, well-organised
management with a broad range of
technical and non-technical capabilities.
In many instances, the responsibility
for cybersecurity falls on the CIO. This is
perfectly understandable but IT risk and
information security have now become
business issues and not simply technical
ones. Additionally, there is no department
that is immune to a cyberattack, or that
shouldn’t consider that certain activities
undertaken within that department may
give rise to a security breach, generated
either internally or externally. The challenge
here is to oversee the organisation’s
enterprise-wide risk management in an
effective way that balances managing risks
while adding value to the organisation.
In an increasing number of companies,
we are starting to see the creation of
a new senior role on the leadership
team, that of the Chief Security Officer
(CSO). Whilst the position of Head
of Security is not new, the role has
changed considerably in scope of
responsibility. Some organisations
are also distinguishing between the
Head of Physical Security and the
Head of Data Security.
Working alongside the CIO, the
CFO and others, one of the CSO’s
responsibilities is to advise the board and
senior executive team on existing risk
management procedures. He/she must be
able to demonstrate the effectiveness of
these procedures in identifying, assessing,
and managing the organisation’s most
significant enterprise-wide risk exposures.
As boards consider these risks, they must
decide whether their current risk oversight
and governance processes enable
40
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

technology
them fully to understand the potential
impact on corporate strategy.
The CSO’s position must interface
with other business areas such as IT,
Legal, Human Resources, operations and
corporate communications. Therefore,
even though heads of IT possibly could
take on this role, suitable candidates must
have a strong commercial ethos as well,
with a global view on the impact of the
cyber threat and a solid understanding of
the changing threat landscape.
The scope of this level of awareness
needs to encompass a range of assets,
systems and activities, including some
perhaps not previously considered as
‘at risk’. These will include assets held
by external organisations – such as
suppliers – since attacks frequently come
indirectly through these third parties.
Earlier this year, Target, the USA’s second
largest discount retailer reported that
the personal information of as many as
110 million customers was compromised
after hackers reportedly installed malware
onto the retailer’s point-of-sale machines
through one of its suppliers.
Given the need to establish a balance
between creating and sustaining a
secure environment, whilst also enabling
end-users to work unhindered, an
experienced CSO should also be a strong
team player capable of embracing and
managing change and collaborating
with others through information and
intelligence sharing. Finding someone
with the right credentials for the role is
a challenge. Growing demand is already
outstripping supply of the most qualified
people, so CEOs may need to consider
executives who have some – but maybe
not all – the skills required, and provide
the time and facilities for that person
to develop accordingly.
How the board views and responds to
the cyber threat is equally important. As
“the cyber threat is a question
of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, and
organisations need to prepare
accordingly”
with many aspects of the board’s role, this
is as much about knowing what questions
to ask – and being satisfied as to the quality
of the answers – as it is about expert or
technical knowledge. Indeed, discussing
the technical minutiae is almost certainly
not the best use of the board’s time.
Rather, and this will become increasingly
an issue to be reviewed in annual reports
and regulatory processes, the board will
need to demonstrate to stakeholders
– investors, customers, employees and
regulators where relevant – that they are
fulfilling their responsibility of assurance:
setting the strategic framework and
holding management to account.
In the final analysis, the cyber threat is
a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, and
organisations need to prepare accordingly,
even though the nature and target of the
threat are constantly changing . What hasn’t
changed, however, is the responsibility
of security specialists, management
teams and boards to provide technical
capability, business resilience and strategic
oversight respectively.
About the author
Robin Murray Brown
Partner at executive search
consultants, Tyzack.
www.tyzackpartners.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 41

Neil Ritson
CEO, Leni Gas & Oil

Executive insight
Nobody’s perfect. What quality
or ability do you wish you had?
I wish I was someone who could function
perfectly well on 4 hours, sleep a day. There
is so much to experience and achieve that
sleeping 8 hours a day seems a waste.
What is the best business book
you have ever read, and why?
I don’t as a rule read business books, but Who
Moved My Cheese provided some valuable
insights when I first read it in the 1990’s and
those lessons have stayed with me.
Someone you would most like to
have met, living or dead, and why?
I have always been fascinated by complex
people, polymaths, who manage to accomplish
huge amounts in their lifetimes. Winston
Churchill is therefore an obvious candidate.
What do you consider to
be your major achievement
(in life or business)?
I find this quite hard. Life is actually a series
of small steps and on their own none is that
memorable; but when you look back hopefully
they have led somewhere useful. Perhaps, if
pushed, I would say raising a family of five
great sons.
Who or what do you
think is overrated?
Social media! I think the internet is the
greatest invention in my lifetime. It provides
a massive resource, but its popularist offshoot
is I believe overrated and will not be seen as
a long term benefit in the way the underlying
architecture has been such a boon.
What mistakes have you made
(professional or otherwise), and
what did you learn from them?
This is surely too long a list! The only way you
move forward is to take risks, accept mistakes
and move on with the lessons they provide.
One mistake I have made more than once is
to make things too complicated. If it seems
too complicated then stand back and look at
it a different way; there is probably a much
simpler solution.
Which one piece of wisdom would
you pass on to your successor?
In recent years I have certainly learnt that
the court system doesn’t necessarily provide
justice. So never take anything to court; if it
can’t be settled in another way, just drop it;
because you can’t afford the time to pursue
things through the courts. There is too much
else that can be achieved with the time and
money you could waste.
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 43

“La vie est trop courtE
pour boire du vin mauvais”
{life is too short
to drink bad wine}
And always treat people with respect, since
that way you may not win, but you always
retain the moral high ground..
Who has been your inspiration
professionally?
This is an easy one as I spent my early career
in BP working for John Browne, now Lord
Browne, at a time of transformation. John
had many admirable quantities and there was
much to be learnt from him and indeed he was
not Business Man of the Year for nothing!.
How would you like to be
remembered after you retire?
As someone who worked hard, did their best
and gave the rarest of all resources, time,
generously to others.
Do you have a quote or motto
you live (or work) by?
I spent a significant part of my career in
France and the expression “La vie est trop
courte pour boire du vin mauvais” {life is too
short to drink bad wine} always seemed very
apt both philosophically and in practise.
Learn more about
Leni Gas & Oil
www.lenigasandoil.com
44
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Executive insight
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 45

Vale C
Nickel in
Vale’s operations in Canada are carried out in some of the m
on the up and prices 30 percent higher than six months
words by John O’Hanlon
46
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

anada
demand
ost challenging environments, but with demand for nickel
ago the company is sitting on highly strategic resources
research by Robert Hodgson
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
47

Flash vessels inside the leaching
plant building at Long Harbour
48
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Vale Canada
T
he Vale do Rio Doce in Brazil is
doubtless an idyllic place beauty as
its name, valley of the peaceful river,
implies. However the now more prosaically
named Vale is a global company with which
readers of Business Excellence are very
familiar, most recently in our coverage of
Vale’s coal mining operations in Mozambique
– and indeed, Wales.
However since its 2006 acquisition of
Canadian nickel mining operator Inco Vale
has been a major player in Canada, where it
now has a dozen mines and operational sites.
To give an idea of the scale of the Canadian
operations, now a wholly owned subsidiary
of the Brazilian major, its base metals
headquarters in Toronto alone employs
850 people at three sites that administer
people in processing nickel, electrocobalt
and precious metals, exporting finished nickel
products throughout the world.
Over in northern Manitoba , the operation
at Thompson (named after John F Thompson,
chairman of International Nickel when a
significant body of ore was discovered there
in 1956) is located 740 kilometres north of
Winnipeg and is known as Vale’s northern hub.
Operations, there consist of the Thompson
and Birchtree Mines along with the Thompson
mill, smelter and refinery, which between
them employ about 1,500 people and cover
some 250 acres.
From there we can proceed to an area where
Vale is currently making major investments.
St. John’s, the province’s capital city, is
home to Vale’s Newfoundland and Labrador
“Since its 2006 acquisition of Canadian nickel mining
operator Inco Vale has been a major player in Canada”
Vale’s countrywide operations and house
the company’s technology development
department. Base metals in this context covers
almost everything apart from gold, silver and
platinum, and definitely includes nickel.
Also in Ontario, though about 400
kilometres to the north of Toronto, Sudbury
has enough untapped nickel deposits to
support mining for decades to come. In total,
Vale has six mines, a mill, a smelter and a
refinery in Sudbury, making this one of the
largest integrated mining operations on the
planet, employing approximately 4,000
people. Raw materials from Vale’s Sudbury
operations are shipped to The Port Colborne
nickel refinery, a vast 360-acre complex on
the shore of Lake Erie in southern Ontario.
The refinery dates back to the early days of
Inco nearly 100 years ago and employs 170
corporate office from which its operations in
Voisey’s Bay and Long Harbour are controlled.
These two sites produce nickel and copper
concentrates, employing 580 full-time staff
supported by more than 3,000 contractors.
The main features of the Voisey’s Bay
site, which is remote by any standards and
during the winter very cold indeed, are the
open pit, the concentrator, waste rock storage
areas, sedimentation ponds and tailings
disposal areas. The mine opened in 2005,
and the site also includes vast deposits with
potential for future underground operations.
Vale has committed to developing deeper
mining, creating hundreds of jobs. However
most of the workers need to be brought in.
They generally work on a two-week rotation
at the fly in/fly out operation. While at site,
workers live in an accommodation complex
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
49

Protective Coatings, Inc.
Protective Coatings, Inc. has diversified greatly since its
foundation in 1958 and its knowledge and experience
make it a role model for the rubber lining industry
www.proco-fwi.com

Protective Coatings Inc.
Role Model
Protective Coatings, Inc. was founded
in 1958 in Fort Wayne, Indiana as a tank
lining applicator. The lining business historically
has been one of fluctuating volume. With these
fluctuations in mind, the company determined
that it would be wise to diversify into related
business areas. This diversification has
permitted it to develop a highly skilled and stable
work force ready to react to its customers lead
time requirements.
Protective Coatings, Inc. has remained an
active, growing company since its foundation,
with its knowledge and experience making it a
role model for the rubber lining industry. The
company has flourished by adhering to a number
of important principles. The first of these is
safety, something that always comes first for
the company and sees each of its employees
receiving OSHA 30 Hour or greater training.
“The company has
flourished by adhering to
a number of important
principles.”
Honesty, integrity and ethics are other key
principles, with Proco always operating with the
desire to be fair, straightforward and sincere in
its conduct, firm in its adherence to a code of
high moral values, and with the intention of never
trying to win business by making negative claims
about its competition. Rather it wants to earn
business based solely upon its owns merits.
The other principles at the heart of the
business are quality, value, dependability and
service. Proco offers excellence in the services
and products it provides and manufactures.
Said services and products offer marketability
through their craftsmanship and the high quality
of the ingredients used, while Proco’s more than
50 years of business operations is a result of
its continued reliability in meeting or exceeding
the needs of the rubber industry. Last, but not
least, Proco desires to be a company that serves
and contributes to the welfare of its customers
through not only its products but with its labour
working safely in outside environments.
In addition to rubber lining applications, some
of the products and services Proco provides
include, epoxy lined pipe and tanks, moulded
rubber parts, moulded parts with fabric and
rubber, moulded parts with both steel and fabric,
tubewinder belts, single-ply roofing systems,
custom poly tanks, drop-in liners and surface
preparation products.
(260) 424-2900
Proco-FWI@Proco-FWI.com
www.proco-fwi.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
51

Mammoet employee operating
a self-propelled modular
transporter (SPMT)
that contains cafeterias, recreational areas,
shops, offices and medical facilities. To get the
ore out, the company makes use of a purpose
built polar-class ice breaking bulk carrier, the
Umiak I. This is the world’s most powerful ice
breaking cargo ship powered by a 30,000
horsepower engine, large enough to drive
an oil tanker ten times as big. Making twelve
trips a year, the ship brings supplies in, and
carries up to 30,000 tonnes of nickel ore to
Quebec City from where it is sent by rail to
Vale’s Sudbury smelter.
That’s for now. But Vale is building a
major complex much nearer, on a partially
brownfield site near the port of Long Harbour
in Newfoundland and Labrador that will be
fed from Voisey’s Bay. Vale’s objective for
the nickel processing plant is to process
concentrate from the mine and concentrator
in northern Labrador to produce finished
nickel product and associated cobalt and
copper products. The $4 billion plant includes
concentrate offloading, crushing, and grinding
facilities located near the wharf. The main
processing plant is located approximately
2 kilometres south of the port facility and
additionally there is a pipeline to supply
process water, an effluent discharge pipe
and diffuser into the harbour and a residue
pipeline into a nearby disposal area. The plant
site will house a complex process in which
concentrate is pressure-levelled in acidic
solutions to separate iron, sulphur, and other
impurities from nickel, copper, and cobalt.
A joint venture of Alberici and Black and
McDonald has erected 263,000 square
foot steel building modules for the nickel/
cobalt electrowinning building and the
“Vale has committed to developing deeper mining,
creating hundreds of jobs at Voisey’s Bay”
52
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Vale Canada
Long Harbour main
processing plant site
182,000 square foot neutralization building
at the new facility, and Fluor is performing
engineering, procurement and construction
management services . The plant, scheduled
to start production in 2013 but delayed by
labour problems, should be in operation this
year. Vale is committed to providing a safe
work environment for all employees and
subcontractors. As part of that commitment,
the companies involved produced a safety
video to be shown to all employees working
on the project.
As an operator in Canada, including some
of its most environmentally sensitive areas
of pristine wilderness, Vale is committed to
the challenges of climate change. In 2008
it launched its Carbon Program, a set of
global actions that promote the strategy
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by
using new technologies and less carbonintensive
processes. Canada has benefited
from this commitment with initiatives such
as the Clean AER project, which will not only
help the environment, but it will ​also increase
the quality of life in the city of Sudbury. With
funding of US$ 1 billion, this is the largest single
environmental investment in the history of
Sudbury– and one of the largest in Ontario. The
core of the project is an 85 percent reduction in
sulphur dioxide emissions from Vale’s smelter
in Sudbury, and a significant reduction in
metals and particulate emissions. The project
is expected to be complete in 2016.
Vale Canada
(1) (416) 361-7669
cory.mcphee@vale.com
@valeglobal
www.vale.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
53

Put a lot mor
North America
The resource that North American Nickel (NAN)
property could be a game changer not just for G
this vital metal to develop thei
words by John O’Hanlon
54
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

n Nickel (NAN)
e nickel in
expects to define this summer on its Greenland
reenland but for the countries that depend on
r industries and infrastructure
research by Andy Turner
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
55

ickel may be one of the most
common elements in the earth’s
N
crust but that does not mean that
it is the most accessible. Unlike some
metal commodities, the global supply
of nickel is concentrated in a handful of
regions of the world. According to the US
Geological Survey, in 2011 Russia was the
world’s largest producer of nickel followed
by Canada, Australia, Indonesia and the
Philippines. It is generally believed that
‘major igneous events’ cause this otherwise
inaccessible element to appear close to the
earth’s surface – well igneous events don’t
come much larger than the 20 mile diameter
meteor that smacked into Greenland three
billion years ago, tearing open a crater
some 60 miles wide. It’s the oldest and
biggest meteor impact identified on earth
so far and its discovery in June 2012 by
researchers from the Geological Survey
of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) may
help to explain the abundance of nickel
in the Maniitsoq area 100 miles to the
north west of Nuuk.
When the meteor hit Maniitsoq, it caused
nickel-rich magma from the earth’s mantle
to flow up into its crust. These nickel-rich
magmas are preserved as the Greenland
Norite Belt, which is the focus of North
American Nickel’s exploration programme.
On August 15, 2011 the company was
granted an exploration license by the Bureau
of Minerals and Petroleum of Greenland
“When the meteor hit
Maniitsoq, it caused
nickel-rich magma from
the earth’s mantle to flow
up into its crust”
Helicopter-assisted off-loading of
equipment and supplies at North
American Nickel’s Maniitsoq
property in Greenland
56
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

North American Nickel (NAN)
“We hire local people
not just for camp
administration work
but also for the more
technical jobs”
(formerly BMP, now the Mineral Licence
and Safety Authority or MLSA). This gave
the company exclusive exploration rights
over an area totalling nearly 5,000 square
kilometres located near Sulussugut. As Dr
Mark Fedikow, NAN’s President and Interim
CEO explains this was a massive area, and
it was important to reduce it to a more
manageable size once the most productive
areas for drilling had been identified by
helicopter-borne surveying. “Initially we held
the largest ground position in Greenland,
but part of the regulatory process requires
that you diminish your asset progressively.
We have reduced ours to a little over 3,600
square kilometres now.”
NAN is probably spending more within
Greenland than any other company
this year – around $9.5 million. This is a
very significant project for the nascent
Greenlandic mining industry, and Dr.
Fedikow is enthusiastic about the level of
cooperation he has encountered from the
government and local communities. It is
tempting to compare Maniitsoq with the
Sudbury Basin in Canada, whose nickel
deposits are related to a meteor impact,
but in fact it is geologically different
and in many other ways Greenland has
advantages over Canada. The first of
these is in the terrain. “There is virtually
no soil or tree cover, so from a helicopter
you are always looking at bare rock.” This
suits modern airborne geological mapping
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
57

Emplacement of a survival hut at
a North American Nickel drill site
techniques like VTEM (versatile timedomain
electromagnetic system) used for
identifying electromagnetic conductors
such as semi-massive to massive sulphide
mineralisation. NAN has flown more than
5,700 kilometres of survey, and in these
conditions Fedikow says you can maintain
a constant height over the rugged terrain
with the helicopter-borne geophysical
survey, looking a couple of hundred metres
into bedrock.
Working with the government in
Greenland is a pleasure compared with
many jurisdictions, he continues, because
of the steps the authorities have taken to
achieve transparency. The regulatory regime
is straightforward, the rules clear, and the
culture enabling for a responsible mining
company. And Greenland has to be unique
in that there is no such thing as private
ownership of land – it all belongs to the
state. There are no special interest groups
or layers of administration to contend with.
This does not mean that local communities
are any the less respected and involved, he
hastens to add. Best practices are in place
for consultation, maximising the level of
local subcontracting and employment just
as they would be anywhere else.
So on the ground the company has a crew
of 34, including a number of Greenlanders.
“We do try our best to hire local people,
despite the fact that there are only 60,000
people in the entire country!” There is a
government supported programme that
is training Greenlanders for the mining
industry, he notes. “They are moving ahead
“Helicopters are critical for us to get to and from
our drill sites on the property”
58
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

North American Nickel (NAN)
North American Nickel’s Project
Manager James Sparling examining a
norite rock sample, Maniitsoq property
with that, and we do hire
the people according to our
needs and the skills available.
We also hire local people not
just for camp administration
work but also for the more
technical jobs, helping us by
cutting and sampling of the
core and preparing samples
for analysis. They are doing an
excellent job.”
This summer, NAN is
drilling intensively, with one
eye on the weather. The 2013
drill programme led to the
recognition of the Imiak Hill Conduit Complex
(IHCC) which includes Imiak Hill, Imiak North
and Spotty Hill, three mineralised zones
within 1.6 kilometres of one another. “This
year we will drill a minimum of 4,700 metres
of core. That could be increased to as much
as 10,000 metres, but that depends on
results and the weather. In August fog can
Did you know?
20 miles
Diameter of the
meteor that created
the Maniitsoq
nickel deposit
10 kilometres
This year’s optimum
drilling target
significantly impact time in the
air for helicopters. “Helicopters
are critical for us to get to
and from our drill sites on the
property, he explains, so the
weather impacts everything. If
it is kind and the sky stays clear
till September and the results
we are expecting are realised,
the staff, the equipment and
the finance is in place to
complete 10,000 metres.”
The three targets mentioned
will get most of the attention,
says Fedikow, because NAN’s
clear goal is to build tonnage based on
nickel, copper cobalt and platinum group
metals (PGM) mineralisation at the IHCC
and potentially define an inferred resource.
“Ultimately the simple question is, can we
build a resource with sufficient tonnage at a
grade that will allow us to go into production?”
That question is being addressed through
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
59

Dr. Mark
Fedikow
President &
Interim CEO
Cecil Johnson, North American Nickel’s
senior prospector examines a gossanous
norite outcrop, Maniitsoq property
Mark has 35 years
of industry and
government experience
as an exploration
geochemist and mineral
deposits geologist.
He has worked for
major and junior
mining exploration
companies and the
Manitoba Geological
Survey completing
his employment at
the Survey as Chief
Geologist of the
Mineral Deposits
Section. In 2001, Mark
was the recipient
of the Provincial
Geologists Medal, a
Canadian national
award for outstanding
geoscientific
achievement. Mark is
also a Fellow of the
Association of Applied
Geochemists.
60
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

North American Nickel (NAN)
“As time went on
the results were so
promising that we
thought again and said
perhaps we would build
a mine ourselves”
the drill results, and constrained by a
conceptual economic scenario that is being
prepared in collaboration with global mining
consultancy Golder Associates.
This will provide an estimate for the
necessary nickel resource and the feasibility
of building a mill, starting mining, , and
marketing the product. The next steps will
depend on what the Golder preliminary
economic scenario concludes.. Originally the
game plan was to define the resource and
then involve a major nickel miner to come
in and take the project over, he says. “As
time went on the results were so promising
that we thought again and said perhaps
we would build a mine ourselves. That is
one reason why we contracted Golder
Associates to give us a picture of how we
might proceed and how the economics
would stack up.” It will depend on what is in
the best interests of the NAN shareholders,
he says, but he is looking at a precedent
that was set with the discovery of the Reed
copper deposit in Manitoba in 2007 by NAN’s
sister company VMS Ventures. In that case
a 70/30 joint venture with Hudbay Minerals
was established, with Hudbay building and
operating the mine and VMS retaining a
minority interest. “That might be the route
we take in Greenland.”
Regardless of the manner in which NAN
moves forward its intention is to build a
Massive pentlandite-chalcopyrite
mineralization in drill core from the
Maniitsoq property
nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM resource that will
lead to an exploitation licence application.
The Greenland government is supportive
and keen to see this become one of the
early producing mines – one that will put
Greenland firmly on the world nickel map
at a time when stalled infrastructure in
developing economies is expected to get
under way. Nickel demand is directly linked
to infrastructure growth, a fact that will not
be lost on investors as they look at North
American Nickel.
North American Nickel (NAN)
604-986-2020
info@northamericannickel.com
@NAmericanNickel
www.northamericannickel.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
61

Adr
Exploring new
Over the last twelve months Adrok has experienced sig
its presence in key North American markets and
words by Will Daynes
r
62
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

ok
possibilities
nificant gains, not just in terms of turnover, but also
its acceptance into important sectors of industry
esearch by James Boyle
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
63

Opening of our Canadian office with
Prince Edward Island’s Provincial
Minister, Allen Roach (left)
64
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Adrok
B
usiness since we last spoke has been
good for the company,” enthuses
Adrok’s Managing Director, Gordon
Stove. “We have been growing steadily and
in the process increased our turnover for
last year compared to that achieved in 2012.
At the heart of this has been our ability to
win more clients, and with this they have
brought us fresh contracts and new sources
of revenue. What that means is that at this
time we are well on course to increase that
turnover again for 2014, so things are going
very nicely for us indeed.”
That last time we spoke which Stove refers
to was in March of last year. It was then that
we spoke at length about Adrok’s plans to
expand its international presence in core
markets, specifically the United States through
North America through the opening of a new
Canadian office. Since then, Adrok Canada
has provided the business with a base from
which to service existing clients in the region
and develop relationships with the country’s
prosperous mineral exploration industry.
“Canada is unique in that it possesses
all of the land attributes we can use to
demonstrate the versatility of our Atomic
Dielectric Resonance (ADR) technology and
its capabilities,” Stove says. “There is ice,
snow, dry areas, water and high mountainous
areas all present within the country, and one
of our key unique selling points is that our
technology is very portable. This means
that we can take our technology and survey
crews into areas that other large geophysics
techniques, large seismic trucks for example,
“We have been growing steadily and in the process
increased our turnover for last year compared
to that achieved in 2012”
the opening of a new office in Houston, Texas.
This office has been operation for well over
a year now and is today helping to facilitate
some of Adrok’s strongest areas of growth.
“In truth we planned for a relatively slow
start when it came to our activities in the
US, what with it being traditionally a more
conservative market,” Stove explains. “With
that being said we still challenged ourselves
to obtain a certain number of clients and
with the two new clients we secured at the
turn of the year we have already reached our
targets with only a quarter of 2014 behind
us. Needless to say therefore that we are
quite happy with the progress we have made
in this important market to date.”
In July of last year the company also
made the decision to increase its presence in
won’t necessarily want or be able to go. As a
company we pride ourselves on our ability to
be very nimble on the ground, as it were, and
that makes Canada an ideal playground for
us to grow into.”
Adrok’s bases in Canada and Houston
also present the company with the perfect
springboard into other key regions of North
America. Its Canadian office will allow the
business to test the waters of markets such
as Atlantic Canada, Alberta, Colorado and
California, while its Houston base will allow
it to target the Southern US and Central
America in the months to come.
By offering a faster, cheaper and greener
alternative to traditional seismic exploration
methods, Adrok has been able to draw together
a portfolio of clients including those specialising
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
65

Gordon Stove
Managing Director
Gordon has over 10 years’ experience
in developing and applying geophysical
and remote sensing diagnostic
technologies. He is co-founder and
shareholder of Adrok Ltd and has helped
in the development of Adrok’s intellectual
property portfolio. Since Adrok’s
inception, Gordon has managed Adrok’s
technology developments and managed
its global services business. Gordon
is currently a member of the Energy
Institute, Petroleum Exploration Society
of Great Britain, European Association
of Geoscientists and Engineers, Society
of Exploration Geophysicists, American
Association of Petroleum Engineering,
Society of Petroleum Engineers, the
Scottish Oil Club, Institute of Directors
and the Caledonian Club. Gordon
supports young entrepreneurs as a
Business Mentor for Business Mentoring
Scotland, as well as for the Prince’s Trust
Youth Business Scotland. Gordon holds
a BSc (Hons) in Geography from the
University of Edinburgh and is a PRINCE2
Registered Practitioner.
in geophysical exploration and research. Indeed,
the company’s record for winning contracts and
projects in the mining sector has continued to
gather pace, however a particular area in which
it has been earning more business as of late is
the oil and gas sector.
“Traditionally the oil and gas sector has
been very slow to adopt new methodologies
or technologies, with the average timeline in
this sphere being anything up to 24 years,”
Stove highlights. “While we have been around
for 15 years, giving us a certain degree of
legitimacy, the simple fact is that we are
being approached for work because we have
a proven history of saving our clients money.”
What the company is doing is providing
a service to its oil and gas clients before
66
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Adrok
Field crew scanning for
oil in Oklahoma
they embark on drilling programmes and
Adrok’s technology is being used to guide
said clients to the best places to drill for
success. Additionally it is helping to reduce
the number of drill holes required, thus
increasing clients success rates.
“With our success to date in the oil and gas
sector we have begun to turn our attention
towards also getting involved in projects of
our own making, almost becoming something
of a pseudo oil company ourselves,” Stove
reveals. “At present we are working to pick
up such projects and are embarking on
negotiations with several companies in the
US about coming together to operate joint
undertakings. It means that our business
focus will increasingly turn to not just
providing expert services to certain clients,
but also towards taking an active interest
in what we find in the ground.”
The oil and gas sector also provides the base
for a field of expertise that Adrok and Stove
are very excited to progress into. “I believe
that a real breakthrough for the company
in the near future will come from delivering
advanced monitoring solutions for existing
oilfields,” he says. “Within the vast majority
of oil companies one will find an advanced
oil recovery programme and we want to
be a part of that. By installing a permanent
installation in the ground, complete with
our sensors and scanners, we will be able to
monitor levels of oil and water in the ground,
as well as steam injection, water injection and
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
67

Field crew scanning on ice in Canada
(on Atlantic Ocean)
68
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Adrok
“I believe that a real
breakthrough for the
company in the near
future will come from
delivering advanced
monitoring solutions for
existing oilfields”
CO2 injection, which are all techniques for
enhancing oil recovery. Being able to provide
monitoring and surveillance services during
the production phase is something we are very
interested in capitalising on going forward.”
In addition to increasing its turnover last
year Adrok also doubled its workforce to
25 people in 2013 and it expects both these
facets of the business to continue along the
same upward trajectory this year.
“Other immediate plans for ourselves
include growing our bases in North America,
while longer term we can work with the view
of perhaps setting up a permanent presence
in Australia and perhaps China, which are both
markets we see great long term potential in,”
Stove concludes. “In the meantime we will
continue to provide our services to both
existing and new clients, while increasingly
utilising our technologies to identify projects
of which we could ultimately become
part or full owners.”
Adrok
+44(0) 131 555 6662
info@adrokgroup.com
@AdrokLtd
www.adrokgroup.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
69

Alacer
Sulphide and oxide in
Alacer operates the world-class Çöpler gold mine that pr
a record figure achieved with exemplary safety performa
importance for Turkey’s g
words by John O’Hanlon
70
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Gold
golden harmony
oduced more than 271,000 ounces of gold during 2013,
nce: this is the company’s primary asset and of strategic
rowing mining industry
research by Abi Abagun
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
71

The first gold was poured at
Çöpler in December 2010
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Alacer Gold
I
t puts the current gold market into
perspective when one looks back
just a couple of years. In 2012 when
we last looked at Alacer Gold’s Çöpler gold
mine gold prices stood at just over $1,000 an
ounce. Since then they have risen of course to
as high as $1,800 in mid-2011 before setting
out on a steady decline. Nevertheless at
the time of writing, at a level of £1,246 an
ounce they are still above what was then
considered a very positive level for the
TSX listed company, which in 2014 expects
to produce at Çöpler 160,000 to 180,000
ounces of gold at all-in cash costs of between
$730 and $780 per ounce.
Alacer owns an 80 percent interest in the
mine, with the remaining 20 percent held by
its minority Turkish partner Lidya Madencilik
$322 per ounce. Mining of the Manganese Pit
commenced during 2010, and mining of the
Marble and Main Pits commenced during 2012.
The Manganese Pit has provided the
greater part of ore thus far, however, the
balance is planned to shift to the Main Pit
from the second half of 2014. Processing of
oxide ore started in 2011 with a three-stage
crushing circuit nominally rated at 15,500
tonnes per day (tpd). Toward the end of
last year a parallel clay handling circuit was
commissioned to enable processing of ore
with a higher clay content. The Çöpler plant
now has a capacity of 17,000 tpd. The crushed
ore is then delivered to the heap-leach pad.
To extract the gold from the ore, a lowconcentration
cyanide solution is applied to
the agglomerated ore on the leach pad using
“Following necessary changes Alacer is now well placed to
execute our new strategy in a cost-effective manner”
San. Ve Tic, AŞ (Lidya Mining). Lidya Mining
is owned by Çalık Holding AŞ, a multi-billion
dollar Turkish conglomerate that is enthusiastic
about Turkey’s mineral potential. Alacer first
acquired an interest in Çöpler more than
twelve years ago, and by 2004 it had acquired
100 per cent control of the property. At that
stage, all it really owned were the rights to
mine what was still virgin territory, however
in 2009 it entered a strategic relationship
with Lidya Mining, and construction of the
mine began not long after, with the first
gold being poured December 2010 and full
commercial production announced a few
months later. Çöpler exceeded expectations
during its first year of operations. Commercial
gold production came on stream earlier than
planned and in total the mine produced 185,418
ounces of gold at a cash operating cost of
a low-pressure irrigation drip system. Doré
bars are produced on site and transferred to
third-party refineries for final recovery of gold
and minor amounts of silver. Over the life of
the current heap-leach project, approximately
63 percent of the gold contained in the oxide
ore is expected to be recovered.
It has been a very successful low cost
operation, in some contrast to the mines
Alacer owned in Australia. The latter
returned a poor operating performance,
which coupled with the declining gold price
last year convinced the directors that the
best course of action would be to sell the
Australian assets and focus the company’s
efforts on Turkey. This was an opportunity
for further restructuring and cost reduction,
said CEO Rodney Antal in his review of last
year’s performance. “The restructuring of our
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
73

Alacer Gold
business has also included reductions in the
management team and corporate overheads.
Following these necessary changes Alacer is
now well placed to execute our new strategy
in a cost-effective manner.”
He claims that better than expected oxide
ore grades and a steady improvement in
heap leach gold recoveries will contribute to
making Çöpler one of the lowest cost gold
mines in the world during 2014. There are
“I am very excited about
the progress being made
during 2014”
Securitas Turkey
Securitas Turkey has been providing security
consulatancy and private security services
to Anagold Madencilik since 2008. The
utmost proirity for Anagold is to ensure a
process complaint with local employment
and procurement policies in this project
that hasn’t faced and security breach or
occupational accident. With no occupational
accident during the last year, sustainability of
training to the security team of 46 persons is
ensured by a company in Erzurum. Offering
diverse solutions to each segment, Securitas
takes its services further by procuring
different perspectives to Occupational Health
and Safety thanks to risk analyses.
www.securitas.com.tr
The mine is high in the mountains
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
75

two forms of mineralisation at Çöpler, oxide
and sulphide forms, making the ore amenable
to conventional open pit mining. The oxide
ores are being processed in a simple crush,
agglomeration and heap leach circuit. For the
deeper sulphide mineralisation, Alacer is at an
advanced stage of a definitive feasibility study
(DFS) to evaluate the treatment of sulphide
ore via a system known as whole-ore pressure
oxidation (POX). It is notable, he adds, that the
grade of sulphide ore mined during 2013 was
significantly higher than had been predicted,
with positive gold reconciliation averaging
39 percent on a contained ounce basis. An
extensive work programme is currently being
undertaken, in conjunction with the DFS, to
understand these positive gold reconciliations.
During 2013 Çöpler Gold Mine proved that
it is truly a world class asset by producing
271,063 ounces of gold at total cash costs
of just $429 per ounce from heap leaching
of oxide ore. The mine has very substantial
proven and probable reserves of 3.6 million
ounces of contained gold and measured and
“Alacer is in an excellent position to capitalise on the
transformational changes made during 2013”
271,063 ounces
Gold produced in 2013
76
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Alacer Gold
The remote Çöpler Mine
indicated resources of 8.5 million ounces.
Located in central eastern Turkey, roughly
550 kilometres to the east of Ankara and 120
kilometres south west of the city of Erzincan,
the nearest population centre is the town of ĺliç
(population 3,000) which is just six kilometres
from Çöpler. In 2013, the Çöpler joint venture
started to fund a regional school in ĺliç. It is
estimated that $2.8 million will be invested in
this project by the end of 2015.
A surface gold mine is very different from
an underground coal operation but there
is no denying that the recent horrifying
accident at the Soma mine in western Turkey
has focused world attention on safety in
the industry. Safety programmes include
training for all employees, special training
for exploration and emergency response
teams, recognition for safety achievement,
and a steady flow of information that
keeps people focused on continuous safety
improvement. It is gratifying then to be
able to record that in 2013 more than three
million man-hours were worked at Çöpler
without a single lost time incident (LTI)
up to March this year – during a period
when the mine hit record production, 28
percent better than had been predicted. “I
am very excited about the progress being
made during 2014 and the direction in
which the company is now headed,” says
Antal. “Alacer is in an excellent position to
capitalise on the transformational changes
made during 2013.”
Alacer Gold
+1-303-292-1299
info@alacergold.com
www.alacergold.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
77

78
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Central Rand Gold
All that
glitters
is gold
By utilising innovative methods and technologies
Central Rand Gold is bringing commercial gold
mining back to the City of Johannesburg
words by Will Daynes
research by Robert Hodgson
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 79

B
etween 1886 and the early 1970s
the Central Rand Goldfield was
intensively mined, with overall gold
output estimated to have reached around
250 million ounces. All good things, as they
say, must come to an end however and
by the mid-70s a combination of factors
including depressed gold prices, ageing
infrastructure and the reduction in the
availability of high grade reefs meant that
the area was declared “worked out”.
Truth be told, many lower grade areas of
the Central Rand Goldfield were not mined
at all during the aforementioned period
of mining, thus leaving behind substantial
quantities of gold-bearing ore. In more recent
years these areas have becoming the focus of
the exploration and mining activities of one
Central Rand Gold.
An unhedged gold exploration and
production group, Central Rand Gold today
employs some 113 staff across its various
administrative, mining and metallurgical
operations. Having comprehensively
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Central Rand Gold
researched the geology of the Central
Rand Goldfield, tested various mining
methodologies and devised a strategy to
commercially extract viable gold despots
from the area, the company received its
first New Order Mining Right from the South
African Department of Mineral Resources in
August 2008.
To date the company has acquired a number
of New Order prospecting rights. These assets
are respectively known as Consolidated Main
Reef, Western Areas A, B and E, Langlaagate,
Crown Mines, Anglodeeps, Village Main,
Robinson Deep, City Deep, and Simmer
and Jack. Central Rand Gold’s prospecting
rights extend over an area of approximately
40 kilometres from west to east and seven
kilometres from north to south.
Much of the company’s focus today
is on its Consolidated Main Reef (CMR)
operations, which has been split into CMR
West and CMR East, and the Crown Mines
development. CMR West is Central Rand
Gold’s first mining target area, comprising
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
81

SSC GROUP
Together we grow
The services that we offer at Sekgwa
Mining are:
Backfilling
• Primary service spans from backfilling to
deep-level mining practice
• Sekgwa mining can design and build of
various backfill systems to a depth of 2200m
below surface and with reticulation systems
in excess of 50km
Mining
• Sekgwa Mining is able to supply the complete
package for both conventional as well as
mechanised mining
Why Sekgwa Mining Services?
• The mining solution is tailored to the mining
method in place;
• Risk assessments are undertaken prior to the
design to ensure that all safety requirements
are met;
• Good safety and strong industrial relations
track record;
• 109 years of combined mining management
experience;
• Offers personal service by dynamic and
passionate managers and staff
+27(12) 665 5336
fred@sscgroup.co.za
www.sscgroup.co.za
Sekgwa Mining is a black majority owned
company and offers an environmentally
friendly Backfill engineering service which
allows companies to move some waste
underground and mining services.
Our Core Values
• Safety, Health and Wellbeing of our people and
their families
• Trust, loyalty and respect for all our stakeholders
• Honesty, integrity and transparency in the way
we conduct our business
• Mutually beneficial, value-adding partnerships
Contact Details:
Sekgwa Mining Services (Pty) Ltd
CEO – Fred Arendse
Operations Director – Harry Becker
Tel: +27(12) 665 5336
Mobile: +27(83) 455 1663 (Fred)
Mobile: +27(82) 045 5980 (Harry)
PO Box 68925, Highveld, Centurion, 0169
82
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Central Rand Gold
“Central Rand Gold’s prospecting rights extend over
an area of approximately 40 kilometres from west to
east and seven kilometres from north to south”
an operational underground and opencast
gold mine that utilises conventional
opencast stopping and extraction methods.
This particular mining operation processes
its own run-of-mine output through its own
in-house processing facility that can operate
at a capacity of up to 20,000 tonnes per
month with an average recovery rate of
around 95 percent.
In 2011, CMR West was responsible for
producing 14,856 ounces of gold from
underground and surface operations,
compared to 9,321 ounces in 2010. With
a proven methodology, more than 6,000
metres of development in place, and mine
depth down to 225 metres below surface,
this mine has sufficient underground ore
availability and is estimated to have increased
underground production to 12,000 tonnes per
month during later 2012.
Late 2012 also saw the company conduct
feasibility studies on the CMR East mining
right area. CMR East is expected to be the
first additional project to be developed by
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
83

Central Rand Gold. A significant benefit in
the development of this as a new mining
site is the fact that the current infrastructure
at the adjoining CMR West mine will be
able to be utilised. This will provide major
cost advantages for the viability of mining
the CMR East prospect.
Following the anticipated development
of CMR East, it is expected that the Crown
Mines West deposit could be the next to be
developed. It is also undergoing pre-feasibility
testing and a scoping study before any
development decisions are made. The Crown
deposit has a resource base of over one
million ounces in the indicated and inferred
categories, and has the potential to produce
in excess of 50,000 ounces of gold a year
once fully developed.
It has been estimated by independent
mining consultants Venmyn Ltd that, from the
surface to approximately 450 metres below,
Central Rand Gold’s current resource base is
a level of 26.2 million tonnes of ore and 4.51
million ounces of gold, at an average grade
of 5.34 grams per tonne. Furthermore it is
estimated that from 450 metres down to a
depth of 3,000 metres, another 120 million
tonnes of ore exists. This ore is thought to
“Central Rand Gold’s mining activities within the vicinity of
the Johannesburg metropolitan area requires a completely
unique and environmentally rigorous mining plan”
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Central Rand Gold
comprise of around 32.2 million
ounces of gold at a grade of
8.34 grams per tonne.
Central Rand Gold adheres
rigidly to international best
practices when it comes to
sustainable development. To
this end it pursues a policy of
openness and transparency in
all its dealings with legislators,
affected communities and
other stakeholders.
All of the company’s mines
are required to develop a Social
and Labour Plan to demonstrate
how the mine will comply with
the objectives of social and
economic development and
empowerment that are laid out in the Mining
Charter for the South African mining industry
in terms of the MPRDA. Central Rand Gold
has indicated that it is committed to develop
and implement the Mining Work Program, as
Did you know?
2008
The year the
company was
awarded its
first New Order
Mining Right
133
People employed
by Central Rand
Gold across its
operations today
well as the Social and Labour
Plan, which has to be carefully
integrated into the Johannesburg
Metropolitan City Council’s
Integrated Development Plan.
For its part the company is also
conducting an Environmental
Impact Assessment and devising
an Environmental Management
Plan which involves widespread
public participation. Affected
communities and groups
have been broadly consulted
throughout this process to
ensure a beneficial outcome
for all concerned.
In addition to the above,
Central Rand Gold’s mining
activities within the vicinity of the
Johannesburg metropolitan area requires
a completely unique and environmentally
rigorous mining plan. To this end the company
has been working to establish a new standard
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
85

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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Central Rand Gold
for environmentally safe, clean and nonintrusive
mining in South Africa.
This new standard will see mining taking
place within narrowly contained “slots”
initially, proceeding to depths of 30 metres
at first, and up to 900 metres within a matter
of a few years. It is believed that this will be
unlike any other mining operation in South
Africa due to the novel mine design and the
use of cutting edge mining and environmental
technologies, many of them successfully in
use in Australia and elsewhere today.
Great care has been taken in the
planning of the proposed mine to ensure
that environmental impacts are minimised
and contained. The potential environmental
impacts have been analysed in detail and
the Environmental Management Plan (EMP)
will incorporate state-of-the-art mining and
environmental technologies. Slot mining
methods will be used to access outcropping
ore so as to minimise disruption to the surface,
and mining voids will be systematically
backfilled and rehabilitated.
Portions of the proposed mining area
comprise disturbed land due to old mining
activities which, due to the presence of old
underground workings and disused shafts,
pose a safety threat to nearby communities.
Central Rand Gold will strengthen some of
these old workings and make safe old shafts,
and will rely for the most part on a new
underground network using state-of-the-art
technology. The company will backfill some
of the old disused tunnels and workings that
currently make a rabbit’s warren of the area
underlying the Johannesburg central business
district, thereby making it safer.
Central Rand Gold
+27 (0)87 310 4400
info@centralrandgold.com
www.centralrandgold.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
87

88
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

TRECSA
Lighting up
the isthmus
Guatemala’s energy network is undergoing a
benevolent revolution that is bringing power to the
Central American country’s remote communities,
transforming lives and catalysing business development
words by Will Daynes
research by David Brogan
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 89

ansportadora de Energía de
Centroamérica S.A., or TRECSA for
T
short, is a Guatemalan company
dedicated to the business of energy
transmission. The company was incorporated
in 2010 following the award of a contract by
Guatemala’s Comisión Nacional de Energía
Eléctrica (CNEE – the National Commission
for Electric Energy) for the construction,
management, operation and maintenance
of the first phase of the country’s Energy
Transmission System Expansion Plan. This first
phase is named PET-01-2009.
As a part of one of Latin America’s largest
energy companies, Grupo Energía de Bogotá,
TRECSA started the PET-01-2009 project in
2010, which will palt a big part in building a more
cost effective, reliable and affordable energy
service. As the company’s CEO Edgar Loaiza
expresses it: “We are a relatively new company,
but are able to draw on the commitment and
world-class practices of a business group
with 117 years of experience in the electricity
sector, and 22 years in the natural gas sector,
to deliver a modern power transmission system
to the people of Guatemala”.
Guatemala is the largest economy in the
Central American region. With a population
of 14.7 million, the country accounts for 35
percent of the regional economy. However
as recently as 2012, according to CNEE, the
country was only obtaining ten percent of its
“We are able to draw
on the commitment and
world-class practices of a
business group with 117
years of experience in the
electricity sector”
Steel gantries rise
over the forest
90
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

TRECSA
“This is a nation-wide
project and once it is built
and in operation, it will
benefit all families and
companies in the country”
power needs from electricity – 63 percent was
still dependent on firewood. This is clearly an
economy that stands to benefit massively
from wider access to power. Growing
demand, diversifying the energy matrix,
and strengthening the power transmission
system are among the main targets of the
energy policy. According to CNEE’s demand
projections, an increase of 80 percent is
expected in the next ten years.
The generation sub sector is highly
diversified. It includes hydroelectric,
geothermic, biomass, solar and wind energy
plants. According to official data, in 2011
Guatemala had a total installed energy
capacity of 847 megawatts. “Taking this
diversification of the energy matrix into full
account, it is still necessary to develop a
plan for increased generation capacity. In
turn this will create a greater need to build
and operate new energy transmission lines
and substations, allowing electricity to be
transmitted with high standards of quality and
reliability from its production point to where
it is consumed,” says Loaiza.
Over the years, Grupo Energía de Bogotá,
as well as rolling out expansion projects to
the major population centres in Colombia,
has become recognised as a major player in
the Latin American energy sector. Its role in
Guatemala is an important step in its strategy
to expand its influence, as acknowledged
in the recent appointment of its President
Sandra Stella Consecrate, as the head of the
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
91

inspired
Your weekly digest of
business news and views
www.bus-ex.com
Comisión de Integración Energética Regional
(CIER), an international organisation that
works for energy integration and technical
cooperation in South and Central America and
the Caribbean. It is proud to be one of the
54 Lead Group companies in the UN’s Global
Compact, recognised in the 2013 Dow Jones
Sustainability Index under the emerging
markets category. It was the first company
in Colombia and one of the few in Latin
America to receive a certification in energy
efficiency, responsible use and consumption
on completion of the ISO 50001 Certification.
Now all of this experience is being put behind
the task of progressing an expansion plan that
will deliver sustainable value to the people of
Guatemala. By June 2014, PET-01-2009 was 79
complete (with 43 percent of construction in
place), and the goal is to finish it in September
2015, with the construction of more than 850
kilometres of electricity transmission lines,
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

TRECSA
A new substation
“TRECSA is committed to sustainable development on a
long term basis in Guatemala and the communities where
the PET-01-2009 is being constructed”
which will reach 74 of the 338 municipalities of
Guatemala, at a cost of around $377 million. In
addition to these lines, the company will build
twelve new substations and expand twelve
more in 340 rural communities. According to
Edgar Loaiza the expanded system will be able
to carry more than 200 MW.
Of course, this is a highly technical project
involving key international partners like Siemens,
which is providing power, control, protection,
measurement and communication equipment
for the substations, and the Turkish group Mitas
whose expertise in steel pylon fabrication and
erection has been key to the project. “We
already have four substations constructed and
ready to be energised and another 14 under
construction. More than 900 towers have been
erected and we are on target for completion of
the project in 2015,” says Loaiza.
Community engagement has been one of
his main concerns. “Because so many people
are not used to electricity they have doubts
about the project. Our commitment is to show
them its benefits and scope. We do have the
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
93

Power line under
construction
task of helping people understand that access
to electric power will transform their lives for
the better. This is a nation-wide project and
once it is built and in operation, it will benefit
all families and companies in the country.
However it has already generated around
4,000 direct and indirect jobs”.
Additionally, he points out, TRECSA has
implemented social programmes in the
communities involved, in the areas of education,
health, environment and productivity areas.
To date, TRECSA’s community volunteering
arm Proyectos Voluntarios de Beneficio
Comunitario (PVBC – slogan ‘You bring
your time, TRECSA brings the materials!’)
has benefited more than 8,146 families and
over 4,858 elementary school students in
73 locations close to the network. “TRECSA
is committed to sustainable development
on a long term basis in Guatemala and the
communities where the PET-01-2009 is being
constructed, which is why we work daily to
build trust and long term relationships with
our stakeholders, acting with transparency,
respect, trust, integrity and fairness”
He is equally proud of the expansion project’s
environmental credentials. “We aim to mitigate
every kind of impact during construction, and
of course we follow Grupo Energía de Bogotá’s
guidelines on environmentally sustainable
development, incorporating eco-efficient
targets in our energy performance, waste
management and water consumption, as well
as the protection of biodiversity and climate
change management”.
Among the initiatives undertaken in
the last four years are LED lighting and
stand-by solutions that turn the system off
“More than 900 towers have been erected and we are
on target for completion of the project in 2015”
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

TRECSA
Brand new
control room
when is not in use, and collaboration with
Guatemala’s Conservation Study Centre
(Centro de Estudios Conservacionistas) in
collecting samples of flora in the field and
transferring them to the Centre for sorting,
and expansion of the national database.
Another is monitoring particulate matter and
noise at the construction site, and continuous
archaeological oversight at substations and
pylon sites in order to ensure protection of
the cultural heritage of Guatemala.
The project has a fundamental role in
the diversification of the energy matrix,
emphasises Edgar Loaiza. “As from 2015
more than 30 power plants, most of them
renewable, will be connected to the new
transmission system, making Guatemala less
dependent on oil by-products as an energy
resource. PET-01-2009 will also contribute
to strengthening the power transmission
system by reducing outages”. It will also
help bring electricity generation a lot
closer to homes, businesses and industries
in scattered communities, enabling them to
take a fuller part in the economic life of the
country, he says.
Looking to the future, he anticipates
TRECSA getting involved in many more
projects in Guatemala – certainly the company
has had a good start since it arrived, and is
fulfilling its role as a much needed provider
of infrastructure that will grow the economy
and raise the standard of living of millions of
Guatemalans to levels many of them have
never dream of. He sums up in the simplest
way: “We are proud of the ground covered
and we expect to become a major player in
the national electricity sector!”
TRECSA
(502) 2312 300
info@trecsa.com.gt
www.trecsa.com.gt
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
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96
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

A vision for
Kenya’s future
Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
Electricity derived from geothermal resources will play
a key role in Kenya achieving its Vision 2030 objectives.
Responsibility for this rests on the shoulders of the
Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
words by Will Daynes
research by Stuart Platt
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 97

98
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
I
t was in Larderello, Italy, back in 1904
that the world’s first geothermal
power plant was constructed, a
facility that continues to produce green
energy to this very day. In the 110 years
since then more than 20 of the planet’s
major countries have integrated geothermal
power into their respective energy portfolios,
countries including the US, Japan, Indonesia,
Mexico, Cost Rico and Iceland. Kenya,
meanwhile, holds the distinction of being the
first country in Africa to generate electricity
from geothermal sources.
A clean and renewable source of power,
geothermal energy possesses a number
of important environmental and economic
advantages over traditional fossil fuel sources.
This particular form of energy is commercially
geothermal energy contributes approximately
209MW towards Kenya’s power mix, a
figure which amounts to around 22 percent
of the country’s total production, while its
geothermal potential has been estimated to
reach up to 10,000MW in the long term.
GDC came about as a result of the Kenyan
Government’s policy on energy, which
un-bundled all of the key players in the
electricity sector in order to ensure greater
efficiency. GDC’s role from day one has
been very much tied to Kenya’s Vision 2030
initiative, one which it expects to contribute
towards Kenya becoming a stable middle
income economy. In order to attain Vision
2030, the government wants to be able to
reach a scenario where the country is able to
generate 15,000MW of electricity annually,
“A clean and renewable source of power, geothermal energy
possesses a number of important environmental and
economic advantages over traditional fossil fuel sources”
produced from naturally occurring steam
and hot water which lays trapped in
reservoirs of permeable rocks below the
surface of the earth.
Headquartered in Nairobi, the Geothermal
Development Company (GDC) is a 100 percent
state-owned business, formed especially by
the Government of Kenya to act as a special
purpose vehicle to fast track the development
of the country’s geothermal resources. An
indigenous, abundant and reliable source of
electricity, Kenya’s geothermal resources are
concentrated within the country’s Rift Valley.
It is here that some 14 fields can be found
extending from Lake Magadi to Lake Turkana.
In addition to these fields Kenya also hosts
several low temperature fields outside the rift
at Homa Hills and Massa Mukwe. At present
5,000MW of which it expects to be derived
through geothermal means. This will require a
significant step up from Kenya’s existing total
effective installed capacity of 1,533MW.
For many years Kenya has relied heavily
upon hydroelectricity, with perennial power
outages forcing the government to invite
emergency power producers who use diesel
in order to generate electricity. The stopgap
measure has been very much a double
edged sword for the country, answering the
immediate need for emergency power, but at
the same time increasing the cost of electricity
for the consumer and causing significant
damage from pollution.
For its part the Kenyan Government has
known for a while that the aforementioned
negative issues cannot be allowed to
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
99

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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
remain a factor as the country continues
to grow. To that end it has commissioned
GDC to take advantage of the country’s
untapped geothermal potential and has
provided the company with the mandate
and means to drill as many as 1,400 steam
wells to provide the required 5,000MW of
geothermal power by 2030.
In addition to being tasked with promoting
the rapid development of geothermal
resources in Kenya, GDC is also responsible for
promoting alternative uses of said resources.
Such alternatives include greenhouse heating,
the drying of grains, the pasteurising of milk,
and the cooling and heating of rooms.
Given the wide number of possible uses
for geothermal resources it is unsurprising
that GDC’s customer base reflects a variety
of stakeholders from different walks of life,
all of whom share a strong interest in the
development of geothermal technology
in Kenya. These customers fall into
categories such as government ministries,
development partners, independent power
producers, investors, governments from
the East African Rift System countries and
local community groups.
Understandably, GDC is immensely proud
to be spearheading growth in the geothermal
energy sector. Since day one it has been the
creed of the company to actively pursue all
practices that are deemed capable of saving
the environment from pollution. By committing
to provide affordable, safe and reliable energy
to as many Kenyans as possible, GDC by
extension will be saving on the use of wood
National Oilwell Varco
NOV, after successful delivery of drilling
equipment to Menengai field, will partner with
GDC drilling engineers to ensure they receive
optimal performance from the equipment.
NOV will provide the BHA design, use of the
downhole telemetry BlackBoxTM recording
system, field-testing of a new PDC drill bit,
and a team of expert drilling engineers to
ensure optimal performance for GDC.
www.nov.com
“The Kenyan Government has provided the company
with the mandate and means to drill as many as
1,400 steam wells to provide the required 5,000MW
of geothermal power by 2030”
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
101

fuel and will thereby be assisting in the efforts
to protect Kenya’s forests.
As well as contributing towards the
protection of Kenya’s natural environment
GDC also makes every effort to highlight
the work it conducts in supporting local
educational needs, economic empowerment,
the provision of water and health, and the
preservation of art, culture and sport.
GDC supports the achievement of
education for children in the areas in which
it operates, while also equipping and
rehabilitating educational institutions to
establish model schools. These efforts are
helping to contribute towards the Millennium
Development Goal of increasing access to
education at the primary level by 2015.
The Millennium Development Goal on
“GDC makes every effort to highlight the work it
conducts in supporting local educational needs, economic
empowerment, the provision of water and health, and the
preservation of art, culture and sport”
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Geothermal Development Company (GDC)
the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger by 2015 creates the imperative for
all sectors, the corporate, civil society and
government, to collaborate towards income
generation, food security, job creation
and poverty alleviation initiatives. GDC
actively engages innovative young people
from its areas of operation to improve the
economic status of the communities.
When it comes to the health and wellbeing
of these aforementioned communities,
GDC recognises that clean water not only
sustains life, but prevents water-borne
diseases. GDC supports projects that
conserve water sources and explore new
methods of harvesting rain and underground
water. GDC also supports the rehabilitation
of water pans and sink boreholes for the
communities. With regard to health, GDC
is working to facilitate access to affordable
health care among local communities.
Last, but by no means least, GDC is also
making every effort to work with individuals
and groups to preserve and promote local art
and culture for future posterity. The company
also encourages and supports sporting
activities which it and others realise helps to
foster peace between communities.
Geothermal
Development Company (GDC)
+254 719 036 000
info@gdc.co.ke
www.gdc.co.ke
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
103

Welcoming passeng
Punta Cana Inter
In the space of 30 years Punta Cana International A
Republic’s leading destination for travel, but
words by Will Daynes
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

national Airport
ers to paradise
irport has grown to become not only the Dominican
also one of Latin America’s premier airports
research by Abi Abagun
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
105

Frank Elias Rainieri, Director
of Grupo Puntacana
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Punta Cana International Airport
C
overing an area of approximately
48,445 square kilometres, the
Dominican Republic is the second
largest Caribbean nation by area and is home
to an estimated ten million people. Today it
also represents the second largest economy
in the Caribbean and Central American
region and has the ninth largest economy
in all of Latin America, one that was long
known for agriculture and mining, but is now
dominated by services.
The Dominican Republic can also lay
claim to the much sought after title of
being the most visited destination in the
Caribbean, with tourism now being the
driving force behind the nation’s economic
growth. Increased tourism over the last
several decades has brought with it a need
tourists within 30-45 minutes of the area.
Indeed the journey towards realising
Rainieri’s vision was a drawn out affair with
the passage of three governments occurring
before permission was finally granted in 1982
to build what would become the first privately
owned international airport in the world. Two
years later, in 1984, Punta Cana International
Airport officially opened its doors.
“In our first year of operations we received
a total of 3,893 passengers,” Rainieri
continues. “Since then we have grown at a
rapid pace, experiencing a consistent yearly
growth rate of around ten percent, to get
to the point where today we service some
5.1 million passengers on an annual basis.
In that time we have also transformed into
the most well connected airport in Latin
“We have grown at a rapid pace, experiencing a consistent
yearly growth rate of around ten percent, to get to the
point where today we service some 5.1 million passengers”
for modern infrastructure across the nation,
capable of servicing the ever expanding
volumes of people visiting it.
One of the best examples of this improved
infrastructure and of a development that
encapsulates the prosperous state of the
Dominican Republic in the 21st century is
Punta Cana International Airport.
“The idea of building an airport in Punta
Cana was first envisioned back in the early
1970s,” explains Frank Elias Rainieri, Director
of Grupo Puntacana. Despite struggling at
first to receive government approval for his
plans, Rainieri realised that with the nearest
airport to Punta Cana being some four
hours away in Santo Domingo, the only way
to develop tourism and bring revenue from
tourism into Punta Cana was to bring said
America hosting many of the world’s leading
airlines that today fly and from numerous
destinations across Europe, South America
and the United States.”
The incredible growth of the airport
has also been a direct contributor to the
increase in tourism to the Dominican
Republic, and the positive impact this has
in turn brought to the nation. Prior to the
opening of Punta Cana International Airport
the Dominican Republic is estimated to
have possessed between 4,000 and 5,000
hotel rooms across it. Today, 30 years later,
the figure stands at an impressive 55,000
hotel rooms. The explosion in tourism is
believed to now contribute towards some
800,000 direct and indirect jobs, while
tourism in the Punta Cana area alone is
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
107

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helidosa
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In 1992 the idea of creating a company
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For this reason, HELIDOSA was created and
since then has become the largest helicopter
and jet service company in the Dominican
Republic, and a pioneer in the regions
aviation industry.
HELIDOSA has become a synonym of
prestige in national and international markets,
obtaining high brand recognition, based
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110
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

OTHER SERVICES
National Premium
Charter Service
Striving to reach the
highest standards
of safety, quality and luxury using modern
helicopters such as Bell 429 and 407GX,
available to our premium clients for charter
flights in the national territory and Haiti;
departing from any heliport, airport or landing
area the client requires.
Air Ambulance
Aero Ambulancia is
the first and only air
ambulance company
in the Dominican
Republic, certified by the IDAC
(Dominican Institute of Civil Aviation)
and ISO 9001, providing the most complete
medical service. Available 24 hours a day with
coverage across the entire Dominican territory
by helicopters and the Caribbean, United
States and the rest of Central, North and
South America by jets.
Helicopter Tours
Discover with us
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44 and Robinson 66 helicopter models.
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1-904-655-4283
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
La Isabela International Airport, Hangar #1 and #14
1-809-826-4100
www.helidosa.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
111

The leader in
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Santiago-Puerto Plata - Punta Cana and La Romana
www.damacargo.net
The largest aviation
maintenance company in
the Dominican Republic
With a presence in all D.R. airports,
MCL serve over a thousand
flights every month
Discover how we can serve you!
Aeropuerto Int’l Las Américas,
Deposito #10 Zona de Carga,
Santo Domingo, Rep. Dom.
T: 1(809)549-1703
E: administración@mcl.com.do
jquintana@mcl.com.do
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Punta Cana International Airport
said to represent around nine percent of
the Dominican Republic’s total annual GDP.
Over the last three decades one
particularly admirable trait of the airport has
been its commitment to careful expansion,
growing in size and modernising in line with
both the changing nature of the aviation
sector and the demands of its passengers.
Less than two years ago, in November
2011, the operators of the airport went about
expanding the facility with construction and
integration of a new runway and air traffic
control tower, while at present $100 million
is being invested into the airport’s newest
terminal building.
“Work on the new terminal began on
1 March of this year and we plan to have it
opened to the public on 1 November, 2014,”
Rainieri enthuses. “It is a completely new,
state of the art building which will boast
seven new check in areas, immigration
arrivals and departure check points, duty
free areas, a food court and other retail
space. The new terminal building will help
dama
Dama Airline Cargo Management, leader
in Dominican Republic for Handling and
Warehouse facilities on Import and Export
Cargo, established in 2002, we have stations
in all D.R. airports; also we have a warehouse
in Miami, Florida – Dama Cargo Logistics,
Corp to satisfy all your needs in cargo
solutions and logistics.
We represent the following cargo airlines:
ABX, DHL Aviation, Vensecar, Taca Airlines,
Avianca, M&N Aviation, DHL Aeroexpresso.
Our facilities had been certified by
FAA Inspections and our personnel
receive courses on Dangerous Goods,
Documentation, Warehouse Control and
Handling. We provide business solutions and
support to our customers and airlines.
www.damacargo.net
MCL
In 1995 MCL was established and registered
as a line maintenance company in accordance
with the Laws of Dominican Republic.
The company’s goal is to be the best provider
maintenance service in our country for
this purpose we are the largest aviation
maintenance company based in Dominican
Republic with presence in all D.R. airports.
We serve over a thousand flights every month
and the best professional maintenance crew
in D.R. with 15FAA A&P licensed technicians
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COPA Airllines, Air Transat, DHL, Aerolíneas
Argentinas.
administración@mcl.com.do
Punta Cana International
Airport Terminal B
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
113

PUROS DE HOSTOS
Puros de Hostos Ltd produces with passion
the world’s finest, totally handcrafted, cigars
made from 100 percent Dominican organic
tobacco developed entirely from Cuban
seed. Founded in spirit by Bayoán de Hostos,
grandfather of the current Master-blender,
Gustavo A de Hostos, the company uses
tobacco grown by the Reyes family in the
Valle del Yaque renowned as one of the best
places in the world to grow, cure, ferment &
age tobacco for premium cigars since the
early native Taino Indian people grew it as a
powerful medicinal herb.
Puros de Hostos cigars are available at Punta
Cana Airport, in the new cigar & rum duty
free shop.
www.purosdehostos.com
us continue to meet the increase in traffic
we are experiencing each year, at the same
time improving the overall experience on
offer to our passengers.”
There are several other major
developments currently underway at the
airport. A particularly important moment
will occur on 1 July this year when the airport
becomes equipped to welcome the Airbus
A-380, the world’s largest passenger airliner.
“To date we have already had two airlines
requesting permission to fly A-380’s into
Punta Cana in the near future and we look
forward to welcoming them to our airport in
due course,” Rainieri states.
Outside of the airport’s passenger
terminals efforts are also presently being
made to expand its cargo facilities. “We
are very much becoming a hub for cargo
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Header folio
Punta Cana International Airport
current Control Tower
“To date we have already had two airlines requesting
permission to fly A-380’s into Punta Cana in the near
future and we look forward to welcoming them
to our airport in due course”
being sent between South America and
Europe,” Rainieri highlights. “More and
more businesses are seeing Punta Cana
as the perfect middle ground between
the two continents and are using us as a
transfer point. The expansion of our cargo
capabilities, through the building of a 5,000
square metre facility, is designed to meet
what we expect to be further demand for
this type of service. This facility will be
operational as of 1 October, 2014.”
This virtually unrivalled degree of
flexibility when it comes to being able
to invest in and renovate the airport is
undoubtedly one of the greatest strengths of
Punta Cana International, if not the greatest.
BE Monthly [ Issue 83 ]
115

You would be extremely hard pressed to
find another example of an airport operator
deciding in mid-November of 2013 that it
was to make a $100 million investment in
a new terminal building and subsequently
having the plans ready and in place by the
first week of February 2014 in order to begin
work the following month.
“It is that combination of being able to
mobilise efforts in such a short space of time
and having a board of directors with such a
high level of faith as to allow that amount of
capital investment with no questions asked
has been hugely important to us over the
years,” Rainieri says. “Our ability to make
rapid improvements to our infrastructure
and facilities, without having to embark
on the long drawn-out processes that face
government owned airports, is a massive
advantage that we have over other airports
in the region.”
It would also be remiss of me not to
highlight that as well as contributing to
the revenues brought into the Dominican
Republic as a result of tourism, the
airport operators also continue to make a
“We expect to have ten million passengers passing
through the airport within the next decade”
Punta Cana International
Airport arrival entrance
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Punta Cana International Airport
Punta Cana International
Airport Terminal 2
concerted effort to support Punta Cana’s
local communities. Ways in which it does
go beyond simply providing employment to
thousands of men and women, extending to
the sponsoring of local schools, the funding
of scholarships and the sponsoring of local
hospitals, one of which it has helped triple
in size in the last decade alone.
In addition to the aforementioned exciting
developments occurring at the airport this
year, Punta Cana International’s operators
are buoyed by the fact that summer bookings
for 2014 show a growth rate of 16 percent
compared to last year, while tourism from
the United States continues to sky rocket,
with growth this year from that market
expected to top 45 percent.
While things are certainly looking good
in the short term for the airport’s operators,
much of their collective focus remains on
what can be achieved in the future. “What
we want to do is take the growth we are
seeing today and push that further forward
in the years to come,” Rainieri concludes.
“We expect to have ten million passengers
passing through the airport within the next
decade. Admittedly this is a big target to hit,
and one that will involve the airport doubling
in size, however it is one that we believe is
fully achievable.”
Punta Cana
International Airport
809 959 2376
customerservice@puntacana.com
www.puntacanainternationalairport.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
117

CE
Eyes to t
El Salvador is a small country but a fortunately
transportation enterprise CEPA has the job of se
of La Unión Centroamericana into a Centr
words by John O’Hanlon
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

PA
he east
placed one: its government-owned multimodal
izing the opportunity to transform the new Port
al American logistics and distribution hub
research by Abi Abagun
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
119

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CEPA
E
l Salvador’s Executive Autonomous
Port Commission (CEPA) is the
organisation charged with managing
the country’s transportation infrastructure – its
ports, airports and railways. Tracing its origin
back to the 1950s it has accrued responsibility
for a number of projects over the years in a
piecemeal way. Over this period El Salvador
has attracted international attention for some of
the wrong reasons, taking attention away from
the considerable strengths that derive from its
strategic location at the heart of the Americas.
Nevertheless, since 2001 when it adopted
the US dollar, Central America’s smallest
country has grown to be the region’s third
largest economy. El Salvador is located at the
centre of the Americas, giving easy access to
the north and south as well as the Caribbean
Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption
Perception Index, this looks like a very attractive
place to invest in. And that is before even
mentioning its ports – but it does underscore
the rationale for siting the Port of the Central
American Union here, turning El Salvador into
a platform for regional logistic services.
CEPA itself has had a bumpy ride over
recent years, however, with successive
government administrations failing to set
a strategy for the organisation: it has been
led by twelve leaders over the last 20 years,
eight of them in the eight years leading up
to the appointment of its current President,
Alberto Arene. As an institution, CEPA has
suffered from years of neglect. Low public
and private investment during the last 15
years is reflected in the infrastructure and
“The creation of a regional platform for logistic services
that will transform the old model is essential”
markets, offering a large market to investors.
The country has good roads linking it with
neighbouring Honduras and Guatemala. And
El Salvador has the most modern international
airport in Central America and the Caribbean,
with 20 daily flights to nine cities in the United
States, among other direct daily flights to
cities in Central America, Italy, Canada,
Mexico, Peru, Dominican Republic and the rest
of the world. It has the capacity to move 2.5
million passengers and 30,000 tons of cargo
on 25,000 commercial flights, a year.
Thanks to the investments made by the
government in education, Salvadoran workers
have been judged the most productive in the
region. Add to that the fact that El Salvador
is one of the most transparent countries
in Latin America, taking the 83rd position
among 177 countries worldwide, according to
management model of the enterprises
administrated by CEPA, which pushed them
into debt and reduced their value. Between
2003 and 2009, CEPA invested $126.69
million in building and equipment for the Port
of La Unión Centroamericana alone. As of the
end of May 2013, the financial obligations
that CEPA had accumulated were in the
order of $106 million, of which $85.2 million
represents an outstanding loan due to JICA
(Japan’s International Cooperation Agency)
for the La Unión project.
But since Arene’s appointment two years
ago the task of creating a roadmap for the
future of CEPA has at last been taken in hand.
“The creation of a regional platform for logistic
services that will transform the old model is
essential,” he says. “Then we can create a new
economy that is much more productive and
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
121

CEPA
“The ferry will be a breakthrough regionally, allowing
us to establish a multi-modal transportation hub”
export oriented. CEPA must now connect El
Salvador with the world and with the future!”
Now is the moment, as Central American
countries wake up to the advantages of
integration, hoping to create a Mesoamerican
corridor that will extend down the longneglected
Pacific Coast with a view to spurring
trade ties to Asian markets. The Central America
Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), between
the United States of America, Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua,
and the Dominican Republic, encouraged
these countries to increase the compatibility
of their trade policies; and in response Mexico
took the initiative of harmonising its free-trade
agreements (FTAs) with various Central
American partners. Central American countries
have signed an FTA with the European Union
and are negotiating with the European Free
Trade Association (EFTA). They also have FTAs
in place with Chile and Mexico. El Salvador,
Guatemala and Honduras have an FTA with
Colombia. Recognising the importance of trade
with the East, Costa Rica has signed an FTA with
China and Singapore. The other four members
of CAFTA-DR have FTAs with Taiwan.
Don Alberto is an economist by training.
His goal is to turn CEPA into a modern and
profitable company which will make a major
contribution to the economic development of
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
123

El Salvador and Central America. Currently,
road transport carries for almost 40 percent
of El Salvador’s external trade. This is a high
figure compared to Europe, for example,
where other transport modes account for more
than half of all goods movements. The principal
reason for this dependence on the road links
is the disrepair of alternative infrastructure.
In Arene’s own assessment: “The railroad
has been abandoned for 30 or 40 years; the
International Airport of El Salvador for 10 to 15;
Ilopango Airport for at least 20 years and the
port of Acajutla for a couple of decades.” In
his estimation, CEPA itself was three decades
behind where it should be.
That is beginning to change as he
pursues a clear goal for CEPA, in line with
El Salvador’s vision 2020. A key part of this
is the government’s National Integrated
Logistics Policy which aims to transform the
country into a Central American logistics and
distribution hub – a platform with a young,
skilled work force, accelerated technological
transfer, state-of-the-art logistics and
industrial parks, an investment-friendly legal
framework, and process specialisation in the
“We are setting our house in order after
decades of abandonment, and now we are
working towards very concrete goals”
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

CEPA
global value chains. “We are setting our house
in order after decades of abandonment, and
now we are working towards very concrete
goals,” declares Arene. He wants El Salvador’s
airports to be the most modern in Central
America, with excellent cargo facilities and
an experience comparable with international
airports anywhere in the world. He envisages
a new railroad system carrying passenger
and freight efficiently within and beyond the
country’s boundaries. But important as these
aims are – vital even – the first task will be
the revival of the ports. Acajutla should be
developed as a specialised bulk cargo port
with adequate storage and downstream
business facilities – but the keystone project
that will enable El Salvador to capture the
potential of the rapidly growing trans-Pacific
trade has already been completed.
This is the Port of the Central American
Union, La Unión Centroamericana or simply
La Unión, which is sited in the natural harbour
formed by the Gulf of Fonseca in the south
east of the country, in an area that has been
starved of investment but is ideally placed for
this key infrastructure project. The port was
started in 2004 and completed in 2008, using
debt funding from Japan. The plan was to then
hand the port over to an operator who would
provide the further investment needed to equip
it and develop the adjacent land as a logistics
hub and industrial centre. In the absence of any
satisfactory legal and regulatory framework,
the government financed the purchase of
container handling equipment and built a 1,700
square metre cargo shed and the port was
opened in 2010, directly managed by CEPA.
The process by which an operator, or
concessionaire, will be appointed has been
progressing ever since, the ‘Law for the
Concession of the Multi-Purpose Port Terminal
of Phase I of the Port of the Central American
Union’ was approved on September 8, 2012.
This statute, drawn up with the help of the IFC,
allows CEPA to grant a 30-year concession to
operate, maintain and develop the 346,578
square metre container port, including docks,
yards and wharves. Bidding has taken place
over the summer, and the result will be
declared before the end of 2013, bringing to an
end the uncertainty surrounding the project.
Whoever wins will be expected to invest an
amount of at least $30 million in the first ten
years and to purchase both the specialised
equipment currently installed and to install
whatever new equipment will be necessary,
such as post-panamax gantry cranes.
The appointment of a PPP operator is
aimed to coincide with the opening of a
ferry service between the port of Corinto in
neighbouring Nicaragua, and indeed the first
sailing between La Unión and Corinto took
place at the beginning of February 2014. The
ferry will transport trucks and containers from
Nicaragua to El Salvador and Guatemala.
Eventually CEPA would like to reach a
transshipment agreement with Honduras,
which also shares the Gulf of Fonseca.
Granting the concession and launching
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
125

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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

CEPA
“The commitment of a country towards the progress of
its people can be measured by the transformation and
modernisation of its logistic services platform”
the ferry will be the first big wins in Alberto
Arene’s grand plan to integrate logistics
platforms in Central America in a way that will
finally give El Salvador the economy of scale
that it needs to establish it as a destination for
trans-Pacific freight. “It will be a breakthrough
regionally, allowing us to establish a multimodal
transportation hub here, cutting cost
and time for the shippers.” At the same time,
CEPA will be working on cutting the amount
of red tape involved in customs clearance.
Multimodal supply chains are not something
that Central American countries have had
much experience in, so it will be a learning
curve for all stakeholders.
In October 2013 four companies from
South America, Europe and Asia presented
documents to CEPA in the pre-qualification
process for the concession of La Union port.
These were SAAM from Chile, the Spanish
Grup Maritim TCB, Bolloré based in France
and Philippines-based International Container
Terminal Services (ICTSI), presented their
experience in port management and financial
capacity. A special committee has examined
the documents, and in February 2014 CEPA
invited the selected firms to present technical
and financial bids.
Hand in hand with the port development
and the ferry is the plan to create a land route
that could be cheaper and quicker than the
Panama Canal to bridge the Central American
isthmus. The proposed Logistic Corridor, also
known as El Canal Seco (the dry canal), is a
371 kilometre road between Puerto Cortés
on the Atlantic coast and Puerto La Unión on
the Pacific. The Logistic Corridor could turn
Central America into the most important
logistic and distribution centre in the
Americas, immensely benefiting El Salvador
and attracting millions of dollars in revenue for
both countries, as well as encouraging further
development along the Logistic Corridor
- particularly in the hinterland of Puerto La
Unión Centroamericana.
That is another important upside to the
Port. The project will revitalise the east side
of the country, bringing in much needed
jobs and investment. Large tracts of land
adjacent to the port but not included in the
concession will be available for development,
encouraging entrepreneurship and further
job creation. Above all, it will provide a much
needed hub to facilitate transpacific trade
into Central America at a time when the
expansion of the Panama Canal has enhanced
the strategic importance of the entire region.
As Alberto Arene puts it: “The commitment of
a country towards the progress of its people
can be measured by the transformation and
modernisation of its logistic services platform.
This is true for any country but particularly
for a small one like El Salvador, which needs
to become organised and internally strong in
order to be in a better condition to participate
in regional and international competition.”
CEPA
(503) 2249-1212
info@cepa.gob.sv
www.cepa.gob.sv
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
127

DHL N
Delivering grow
DHL has been present in Nigeria since 1979
is helping to drive Africa’s largest ec
words by Will Daynes
128
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

igeria
th to Nigeria
. Today its unrivalled service and expertise
onomy to new heights of prosperity
research by Abi Abagun
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 129

DHL employees
scan parcels
130
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DHL Nigeria
P
reviously seen as being hindered by
years of mismanagement, Nigeria has
risen like a Phoenix in recent years
with the economic reforms of the past decade
contributing towards the country finally
beginning to realise its immense potential. In
the last two years alone Nigeria’s expanding
financial, service, communications and
technology sectors have contributed towards it
being recognised as Africa’s largest economy,
being ranked 26th in the world in terms of GDP
and being on course to become one of the 20
largest economies in the world by 2020.
DHL, the world’s largest courier company,
which today is active in more than 220 countries
and territories, was first incorporated within
Nigeria in 1979. “Like all businesses in the
country, DHL Nigeria came from very humble
“From a workforce of just a few individuals,
DHL Nigeria has since expanded to the point
where today it employs in excess of 700
people in the country, all bar one of whom
are Nigerian nationals,” Okereke continues.
“Meanwhile, in terms of volume growth, we
began by handling less than ten shipments per
day, whereas today we are responsible for the
movement of more than 20,000 shipments
into and around Nigeria on a daily basis.”
DHL Nigeria’s fleet of vehicles has also
come on leaps and bounds since those early
days, going from two motorcycles to a fleet
of approximately 260 vehicles as well as the
recent addition of a dedicated cargo aircraft,
the only one of its kind operating in the country.
For the majority of the time that DHL has
been in existence within Nigeria its economy
“DHL Nigeria has expanded to the point where today
it employs in excess of 700 people in the country,
all bar one of which are Nigerian nationals”
beginnings operating out of a single office
in Lagos,” explains Chrys Okereke, Country
Commercial Manager for DHL Nigeria.
In the beginning the company was primarily
tasked with the transportation of documents
in and around Lagos, Abuja and other
major Nigeria cities. In time it also became
responsible for the distribution of goods and
documents on behalf of other DHL divisions
shipping into the country, before ultimately
growing into a fully-fledged entity, delivering
all of the essential services that DHL has
become a household name for across the
country. The service has basically entailed the
transportation of documents and parcels both
within Nigeria and to other countries across
the world, as well as the delivery of inbound
materials into Nigeria.
has been driven by oil and gas activities.
While oil and has remained the economic
lynchpin of the country, with DHL Nigeria
continuing to operate services both into the
country and out of it to major oil producing
locations such as Scotland, Norway and the
US for transportation of equipment and
resources, the growth of other sectors have
brought about the prosperity covered at
the beginning of this article, and indeed the
continued success of DHL Nigeria.
“We have watched consumer demands
evolve massively in recent years, bringing
with them an ever-increasing need for
our services,” Okereke says. A sizeable
percentage of this demand for DHL’s services
in the country is today coming from players
in Nigeria’s booming e-commerce market. “In
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
131

T +234-1-2773767 ext: 4068
E So_supply@sahara-group.com
www.sahara-group.com
So Energy - Fueling businesses across West
Africa with quality products and services
A member of the Sahara Group

DHL Nigeria
the space of 18-24 months we have seen a
tripling in the number of e-commerce related
shipments that we are handling on a regular
basis. The ability for consumers to make
electronic payments has gone from being a
rare luxury to a widespread activity and this
has subsequently become a core driver for
our own growth.”
The emergence of the country as Africa’s
largest economy has also resulted in a surge
of imports into Nigeria, particularly from the
likes of the large supermarket and retail chains
based in South Africa which are looking to
capitalise on increasing consumer wealth.
Despite having watched Nigeria develop
into the thriving country that it is today, DHL
Nigeria continues to take great pride in its
commitment to helping support the people,
communities and environments around which
it itself have managed to blossom since those
humble beginnings in the late 1970s.
Aside from the previously stated fact that
the company presently provides employment
to more than 700 local individuals, DHL Nigeria
carries out its corporate social responsibility
efforts via three pillars dubbed Go Green, Go
Help and Go Teach.
“Go Green is all about environmental
conservation and it is through this initiative
“We have watched
consumer demands evolve
massively in recent years,
bringing with them an
ever-increasing need for
our services”
Within the
distribution centre
So Energy
So Energy is the downstream, retail operation arm
of the Sahara Group, a leading privately owned
Power, Energy, Gas and Infrastructure Company
established in 1996 with operating companies
active in the downstream, midstream, upstream,
infrastructure and power sectors. Sahara has
presence in different locations including Africa,
Asia, Europe and South America.
So Energy has operational retail outlets in Nigeria,
Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire, and is currently expanding
its retail network into other African countries.
So Energy introduces to each marketplace a
new model of innovative stations with distinctly
African, yet modern architecture. So Energy
also provides dedicated diesel supply dumps
for some of its business partners such as DHL
Logistics, Mass Rapid Transport Ltd, Mbonny
Logistics, NIBOL and many others logistics
services to industrial companies that require
fuel for their articulated trucks and heavy duty
machinery needs.
So Energy is committed to delivering quality fuels
and service with customer satisfaction as the key
to our partnerships. So Energy, quality fuels and
so much more….
www.sahara-group.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
133

Aco construction compAny Limited
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We specialize in the construction of Industrial, Commercial,
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We don’t just sell, we service
Our scope of work embraces:
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business news and views
www.bus-ex.com
134
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DHL Nigeria
Fast dispatch by courier
“DHL Nigeria carries out its corporate social
responsibility efforts via three pillars dubbed
Go Green, Go Help and Go Teach”
that we work with various NGO’s and agencies
to ensure that the environments in which we
operate are preserved for future generations,”
Okereke enthuses. “Our work in this field also
includes the monitoring of our own carbon
footprint, supporting programmes that
are working to conserve native flora and
fauna, and encouraging people both within
and outside the business to work towards
guaranteeing a sustainable future for Nigeria.”
Go Help is all about supporting local people
and communities in times of need. This can
include undertaking tasks including the recent
renovation of an old peoples’ residential
home in Yaba, Lagos, supporting children
with Down’s syndrome and blind members of
society, all the way up to providing financial
and material support to corporate and
government agencies involved in disaster and
emergency management.
“Go Teach is all about ensuring that the
future leaders of this country have access to
a high standard of education,” Okereke says.
“Through this initiative we have partnered with
other likeminded corporate bodies to build/
renovate schools, and distribute books and
educational materials to institutions within our
areas of operation. We also continue to fund
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
135

scholarships for children of both our staff and
the wider community on a regular basis.”
In line with DHL’s global focus, DHL
Nigeria’s priority going forward is to expand
its activities and presence across the country.
To do this the company plans to improve
its logistical capabilities by expanding
its fleet, specifically its more unique
modes of transportation.
“We introduced our dedicated cargo
aircraft in September 2012 and in less than
two years we have already exceeded the
capacity for that 737-400 model,” Okereke
reveals. “As a result we have decided that,
in order to continue delivering the same
high level of service we pride ourselves
on, we need to introduce a second
aircraft as soon as possible.”
A separate, but equally unique, member
of DHL Nigeria’s fleet is the boat that it
launched only a matter of weeks ago, which
is today being used to navigate the waterways
surrounding Lagos and is resulting in a much
faster means of transportation than that which
is experienced on the heavily congested roads
of Nigeria’s most populous city.
“We are also in the process of expanding our
gateway facilities within Lagos International
“At the end of the day we only ever gauge ourselves
and our performance on how satisfied the customer
is once they have dealt with us”
DHL’s new river
service at Lagos
136
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

DHL Nigeria
The fleet has grown from two
motorcycles to more than 250 vehicle
Airport,” Okereke says. “We are the only air
express company present in Nigeria with its
own separate gateway facility at the airport,
however having gone from handling around
eight or nine tonnes of goods per day to in
excess of 16 tonnes in less than four years, we
no longer have the capacity that is required.
Therefore we will be working to expand these
facilities in the coming months in order to
meet ever increasing demand.”
During the first 32 years of its existence
in the country, DHL Nigeria operated a total
of 19 offices at its peak. In many ways this
relatively small presence created a situation
where the majority of the population felt
they could not access its services. Today
DHL Nigeria boasts a network of over 250
offices and collection points across the
country, a rate of growth that has brought
it closer to the customers on whom it
places such a high level of importance.
DHL Nigeria’s commitment is to make
its services even more accessible to the
teeming population by setting up more
service centres in the months to come.
“We have just introduced a new concept
within the business that we call our Insanely
Customer Centric Culture (ICCC),” Okereke
concludes. “This concept captures the essence
of what we are about as a company. Everything
we do and every action we take is carried
out with the ultimate aim of satisfying our
customers. At the end of the day we only ever
gauge ourselves and our performance on how
satisfied the customer is once they have dealt
with us. This has been our approach since day
one and will be as we continue to grow.”
DHL Nigeria
0803 907 7000
info@dhl.com.ng
@DHLAfrica
www.dhl.com.ng
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
137

Prime
fuelling
Primefuels has taken advantage of every opportunity to
Central Africa and has grown in less than 20 years to a
words by John O’Hanlon
138
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

fuels
growth
provide a much needed logistics service across East and
partner for major mining, aviation and O&G customers
research by Abi Abagun
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 139

I
t is good to have a company name
that gives a hint to what that company
actually does, and from that point of
view Primefuels is very aptly named. It is a
company, or rather a group of companies,
that specialises in providing bulk liquid
and dry cargo logistics and transportation
services to its customers in East and Central
Africa. Headquartered in Nairobi, the
capital of Kenya, it is today present in nine
countries in East and Central Africa, with a
comprehensive regional network. In addition
to 12 Operational Sites, it has offices and
staff at 30 delivery locations in South Sudan,
Uganda, Kenya, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi,
Tanzania, Zambia, and Malawi. In addition
to its logistics business, it also has business
divisions focused on fuel supply, lubricants
distribution and management, aviation
services, and customs clearing.
The needs in this part of Africa, which
is principally served from the Indian Ocean
ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es Salaam
in Tanzania, are very diverse, and Primefuels
serves them all. From the NGOs that are active
in many high stress countries or provinces
to the fast growing oil and gas and mineral
resources industries, manufacturing, defence,
energy and infrastructure, each sector
needs to work with a logistics partner that
really understands its unique requirements.
Primefuels’ highly trained and professional
staff numbering more than 500 are known
for more than just their efficiency in ensuring
that commodities reach their destination: they
deliver industry leading standards of safety,
health and environmental performance.
Primefuels owns a fleet of over 250 Long
Haul trucks, and either owns or leases 430
dedicated rail wagons operating on the rail
networks of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, but
it was a different scale of operation when it
started out in 1997 at Mombasa. Then there
were just two employees engaged in moving
palm oil and LPG by rail to Nairobi. Two
years later the young company was awarded
a contract to transport fuel to Geita gold
mine by rail, shipping it to a depot in Mwanza
from Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, and
then by road to the mine.
In 2001 the company was established
enough to invest in its own road fleet,
operating out of the Mwanza yard. The next
ten years were a period of consolidation
and expansion and by 2010 Primefuels had
a base in Mombasa, one in Dar es Salaam,
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Primefuels
“Each sector needs to work with a logistics partner that
really understands its unique requirements”
and finally at Kampala, Uganda. Kampala
is the gateway to the expanding minerals
extraction business in Katanga, however
the instability of the region is well known.
In 2011 Primefuels was awarded a contract
to move fuel to the the eastern DRC on
behalf of MONUSCO the United Nations
Stabilisation Mission in the Congo, which
is a massive organisation with more than
22,000 uniformed personnel engaged in
intervention and humanitarian duties. It also
secured a deal with Randgold Resources to
supply its Kibali gold mine in the northeast
of the DRC, approximately 560 kilometres
northeast of the capital of the Orientale
province, Kisangani.
2012 saw the opening of another yard in
Kenya, at Nakuru and the commencement of
road transport services linking the port city of
Dar es Salaam with Zambia and Malawi. Last
year Primefuels strengthened its rail transport
services on these routes, and diversified into
aviation fuel at Tanzania’s southern deep water
port of Mtwara, which boasts an airport where
medium size passenger and freight services
link it to Dar es Salaam.
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
141

Alvi Trading Company Ltd
Direct Importers of Spare Parts for
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Email: alvitradingcoltd@gmail.com
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142
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Primefuels
“As a partner to mining operations owned
by leading international companies Primefuels
has had to acquire deep expertise”
As a partner to mining operations owned
by leading international companies Primefuels
has had to acquire deep expertise not just in
the reliability of fuel supplies but also in world
class standards of safety and environmental
best practice. It has become acknowledged
within the region as a leader in HSE, and the
company is certified to ISO14001, the standard
governing environmental management
systems. All of its vehicles are tracked and
controlled by GPS systems and telematics
ensure safe driving practices, monitoring
any infringement of permitted driving hours
or excessive braking and acceleration. In the
event of a breakdown, full backup plans are
in place.
The Geita gold mine in Tanzania is one of
the largest mines in Africa, and Primefuels
has been its transport partner bringing in
fuel and lubricants from Mombasa and Dar
es Salaam. At Kibali in the DRC, in addition of
transportation of fuel from Kenya and Tanzania
to the mine site, the company supplies and
manages the entire lubricants requirement for
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
143

the mine, with a team of dedicated and expert
staff on site. To these important partnerships
can be added the transport of mining reagents
and consumables from Dar Es Salaam to
the Australian company Paladin Energy’s
Kayelekera uranium mine near Karonga in
Malawi. At Barrick Gold’s Lumwana copper
mine in Zambia is supplied by road and rail
from Dar es Salaam. All these operations are
of course familiar to readers of this magazine,
and form the best possible testimonial for
Primefuels’ services
The MONUSCO contract brought Primefuels
into a whole new set of requirements – clearly
defence is the most exacting environment for
any logistics company. Through its regional
network of depots and offices it transports
fuel to eight different locations in the DRC
under this contract. With a dedicated team
of professional expatriate managers in each
of the key offloading locations in DRC,
Primefuels’ ability to load in both Kenya
and Tanzania means that it can service even
an agency of the UN with professionalism
“The plan is to leverage the company’s expertise and
regulatory status to roll out aviation fuelling to mid-size
and remote airports throughout the region”
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Primefuels
and reliability, despite the risks and
difficulties presented in a tense political
environment and the ever present threat
of lawlessness and conflict.
Primefuels continues to service its
original sector, the palm oil industry with
a dedicated fleet of IMO containers to
ensures that the product is kept safe and
free of contamination. As it has expanded
though, it has taken advantage of each new
opportunity as it is presented, and it is now
ready and willing to take advantage of the
rich hydrocarbon resources being explored
along the East African coast – a situation
that plays well to its established regional
networks and proven levels of service. It has
already begun to offer services to this market
by setting up a dedicated helicopter fuelling
operation in Mtwara.
The fuel facility at Mtwara is now complete,
and Jet-A1 fuel can be supplied direct to the
customer’s aircraft from Primefuels’ own
dedicated storage and ground handling
facility at the airport. The plan is to leverage
the company’s expertise and regulatory
status to roll out this service to mid-size
and remote airports throughout the region,
which have traditionally been under serviced
by the large players in the aviation fuelling
market. For the private airstrips commonly
used at remote sites by mining companies
for example, Primefuels can use its portable
storage technology to set up a temporary
aviation fuel supply for its customer.
Primefuels
+254 20 2228807
admin.nairobi@primefuels.com
www.primefuels.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
145

146
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Tata Zambia
A deep
partnership
The Tata group has a long-standing association with
Zambia which it chose many years ago as its gateway
into Africa: its strategy is to leverage strong customer
focus in diverse markets
words by John O’Hanlon
research by Richard Halfhide
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 147

hough Tata had been selling vehicles
into the Zambian market for many
T
years prior to that through dealership
agreements, it was in 1978 that the Indian
industrial giant first established a company
based there. This was the first to be set up
in the entire continent, and though today
the group’s African headquarters is in South
Africa, and no fewer than 14 countries have
their own Tata subsidiary, Tata Zambia, which
also looks after neighbouring Malawi where
it has a branch office, remains the deepest
ingrained and most diverse of all national
subsidiaries. As Ratan Tata said himself: “The
Tata group has had an emotional tie with
Zambia over the years.”
That at least is the view of Pankaj Khanna,
who as Executive Director of the company
leads and coordinates all of Tata’s interests in
Zambia, where he has been based for more
than 20 years. Of course he would say that,
but the facts bear him out. The core business
is the import, distribution and maintenance of
Tata Motors’ range of commercial vehicles to
the public and private market – commercial
vehicles and buses basically – a sector in
which he jealously guards Tata’s 75 percent
market share of the market up to ten tons.
Before looking at the exciting plans
the company has to grow its specialised
contribution to the mining sector, it is
worth looking at the sheer breach of Tata’s
commitment to Zambia. “When we first came
here we were just selling commercial vehicles,”
says Khanna, “but we soon started to diversify.
At one time we were selling agricultural
equipment and involved in farming and
textiles.” Those businesses are now licensed
out but Tata Zambia retains a wide portfolio
under management. In a disposal of state
businesses in the 1980s and 90s Tata acquired
a bicycle manufacturer which is now run as an
assembly operation using components from
India.
Another unexpected business is the 193-
room five star Taj Pamodzi Hotel in Lusaka. A
“Last year we launched our In
Equipment (IC
Tata Ultra Truck
148
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Tata Zambia
frastructure and Construction
E) division ”
part of Tata’s Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces
brand, the hotel is owned by Tata Zambia
and operated by the Taj Group. This is where
visiting heads of state and other dignitaries
stay when they visit Zambia. And if they are
looking for comfortable vehicles to travel
further afield, they will soon be able to visit
the new Jaguar Land Rover showroom – the
first JLR dealership to be awarded in Africa
since Tata’s purchase of the iconic brand in
2006.
That the government regards Tata as a
trusted partner is nowhere better illustrated
than by the fact that last year the Zambia
Revenue Authority awarded Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS) a three-year contract for the
modernisation of its domestic tax system.
This is TCS’s third revenue and tax system
automation project in the African region
after a successful implementation for the
Uganda Revenue Authority and ongoing
implementation for the Kenya Revenue
Authority, though it has a track record of more
than 20 tax framework implementations in
India and the USA. It’s an integrated and multitax
system covering VAT, income tax, PAYE,
presumptive tax, turnover tax, mineral royalty
tax, excise, property transfer tax, medical
levy and withholding tax. Once operational,
this system is expected to transform the
service delivery to taxpayers, support the
country’s sixth National Development Plan. It
is expected to bring about a higher degree of
accountability and transparency to the entire
public sector.
Tata Zambia is also in the process of
expanding into chemicals and healthcare
products, however mining is the mainstay
of the Zambian economy and Tata Zambia
taps into this industry by supplying a number
of mining products. These include valves,
bearings, rubber linings, graphite electrodes
(used in cobalt processing) and seals. Steel,
mainly plates, is supplied to the local market,
and tyres are sourced from MRF in India. But the
big ticket items for the mining companies are
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
149

under the heading of equipment, says Khanna.
“Last year we launched our Infrastructure
and Construction Equipment (ICE) division,
which supplies heavy equipment like graders
and backhoes and excavators and dump
trucks. Most of these come from India, but
we also have an agreement with a company
called STK in Singapore, and we are launching
those products later this year.”
Under the new agreement Tata will
distribute STK’s TRXBUILD and LeeBoy
brands of heavy construction and road
construction equipment in Africa. Customers
in Zambia will not only benefit from a range
of equipment specially designed for the
mining, infrastructure development, road
construction and maintenance sectors, but
will also benefit from Tata’s established
customer support network. “All this equipment
complements our own range,” Khanna points
out. “Our truck range goes up to around
17 tons, and it is a good way to cover the
market in competition with the established
heavy equipment suppliers.”
This is a buoyant market. Last year
the Zambian government announced a
programme of renewal covering 8,000
kilometres of its roads, and Tata is busily
negotiating supply and maintenance
arrangements with the overseas contracting
“Most clients bring their vehicles to us for servicing,
but for some key clients we provide onsite service”
Tata Zambia office
150
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Tata Zambia
Tata LPK 2516
companies coming in to do this work. In the
mining sector, Tata Zambia’s largest single
customer is First Quantum Minerals. However
the majority of vehicles are currently sold to
subcontractors to whom the large mining
companies subcontract the work of moving
personnel and materials. The vehicles it
supplies are ideal for these customers, and
another place Tata Zambia really scores is
its ability to keep those vehicles on the road
and earning. At its headquarters in Lusaka
and its branch at Ndola in the Copperbelt
the company maintains fully equipped
warehouses and spares departments staffed
by trained technicians. “Most clients bring
their vehicles to us for servicing, but for
some key clients we provide onsite service.
At Livingstone we have an appointed dealer
so they can get service locally, and over the
next six months we plan to open two more
centres, one in the North-Western Province
and another in the Copperbelt where business
is growing fast.”
Training is part of Tata’s DNA, he continues.
Selected staff are sent to India or to South Africa
for three months at a time, and teams from these
centres come in to ‘train the trainers’ locally. The
company has a second regional training centre
at Ndola, he adds, where both Tata employees
and customers’ staff can learn side by side
about the entire product range. “It is what we
feel really differentiates us in Africa. We have a
brand that is known and trusted, a great track
record, and a reputation built over many years.”
Without these essentials, the important element
of competitive pricing would be meaningless,
he stresses. There’s a lot of equipment available,
but little that can boast Tata Zambia’s level of
service backup.
Tata Zambia
+26 (211) 287 160
tata@tatazambia.co.zm
www.tata.com
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
151

Qua
Driven to
From a single eight seat minibus, Quattro has grown
businesses, proving along the way that hard work a
words by Will Daynes
res
152
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

ttro
succeed
into one of Zambia’s most important transportation
nd perseverance can see anyone achieve their goals
earch by Richard Halfhide
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
153

uattro was incorporated in 1993 and is
the brainchild of its founders, Graham
Q
White and Dimitri and George
Klironomos,” explains Administration Manager,
Sanjika Phiri. “Beginning life with just a single
eight seat minibus, Graham surrounded
himself with a strong management team, and
together with the company’s employees built
it into the business that it is today, a multimillion
dollar operation with a fleet of more
than 500 vehicles.”
In 2005 Quattro began transportation work
for the mines of Zambia and today boasts
transportation contracts to ferry employees
and goods for these mines. Besides personnel
transport, it also deals in waste management
for the mines and is able to provide equipment
such as sewerage trucks, skip trucks and skip
bins on a contractual basis.
Quattro also has a newly opened
engineering workshop comprising
engine reconditioning services including,
crankshaft grinding, reboring, line boring,
con-rod resizing, cylinder head repairs
and reconditioning, injector pump and
injector overhauls.
“We have branches in Kitwe servicing
Mopani Copper mines Plc and Chambeshi
Metals Plc,” Phiri says. “We also have three
branches in Solwezi district that cater
to Kansanshi Mine Plc, Lumwana Mine
(Barrick) and Kalumbila Mine. Our total
workforce currently stands at close to 1,000
throughout all branches”
Initially focusing on the handling of imports
into Zambia, Quattro gradually moved into the
field of transportation. “Our first contracted
transportation role saw us running personnel
transportation on behalf of Chambeshi
Metals to and from the Chambeshi Mine,”
Phiri continues. “It was the seizing of this
opportunity that allowed us to get a foothold
in the mining market. Subsequently we
established a strategy to achieve considerable
growth, one that saw us investing in our fleet
of vehicles and equipment in order to seize
“Together the company’s e
business that it is today, a m
with a fleet of more
154
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Quattro
mployees built it into the
ulti-million dollar operation
than 500 vehicles”
the initiative once contracts became available
at the next mine site.” There can be little
doubt that this strategy would prove to be
effective, what with Quattro today servicing
five of Zambia’s six largest mining operations.
That is not to say that Quattro is a company
happy to remain static once an initial goal
has been reached. Far from it in fact, what
with the company making strong moves in
the last several years to further diversify its
service offering, one that already includes
the transportation of explosives, hazardous
materials and waste products.
One of the more recent developments
involving Quattro has been its opening of a
dedicated trucking division. Here the company
operates a fleet of international trucks tasked
with the haulage of materials such as copper
or cement. The copper these trucks carry is
typically being carried to mine sites across
South Africa where it can be processed.
Understandably it is a source of great pride
that Quattro today finds itself involved in such
a large scale industry as the copper trade.
“Diversification can, without question, be a
challenging process, however it has long been
a belief of those of us within Quattro that one
shouldn’t necessarily keep all of their eggs
in one basket,” Phiri states. “Having honed
our skills in the field of passenger transport
it was decided that one of the best ways of
creating new business opportunities, and in
turn greater employment, was to branch out
into other fields like trucking.”
The challenge at the heart of any new
undertaking is the time it takes to adapt to
new ways of conducting operations, a process
that extends to multiple areas of Quattro’s
own business including staff training, risk
management, and health and safety.
“When it comes to passenger transportation
we are accountable first and foremost to our
clients, the mines themselves, and safety is key
as there is no compromise when it comes to
human life,” Phiri says. “Each client possesses
certain standards that they live by and it is
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
155

our responsibility to ensure that we comply
100 percent with those standards while
providing no room for error. These clients
expect nothing but the best from their service
providers and we go all out to ensure that we
meet those expectations.”
Maintaining the highest levels of standards
also defines the ways in which Quattro
approaches its handling of explosives, waste
and other hazardous materials. “Working
within and around mine sites makes for a
hugely unique logistical environment, one
where the absence of tar roads makes for
extremely harsh conditions in which to
transport goods and personnel. Such a climate
calls for the highest of safety standards to
be maintained at all times, with vehicles also
being serviced frequently. Safety is key at all
times, especially when it comes to explosives
and hazardous materials. A lot of people tend
to think that because all of what we do involves
transportation all the same rules must apply,
however that is very far from the truth.”
When it comes to the future of the
“Clients expect nothing but the best from their
service providers and we go all out to ensure that
we meet those expectations”
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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Quattro
company, Quattro’s immediate goal is to
maintain a steady ship, whilst continuing to
identify potential opportunities that could
result in further growth forward, including
the possibility of venturing across Zambia’s
borders into the Congo to work for some of
the mines there. In the meantime however, the
company is more than happy to be growing
steadily in line with the mines and clients it
serves, and who have contributed towards
Quattro’s growth.
“There is a bit of a misconception among
some people that only big, multi-national
investors can come into Zambia and be
successful, however what Quattro, under the
guidance of Graham White, has done is prove
this to be untrue,” Phiri concludes. “We are
a Zambian company that has grown from
strength to strength as a business, while also
ensuring that we do our bit to help others
whether that be in the form of employment
or supporting schools, orphanages and
others in need. What Graham and Quattro as
a whole have achieved to date proves that if
you put your mind towards something and if
you persevere and work towards your goals
anything can be achieved.”
Quattro
+260 21 221 0442
sanjika.phiri@quattro.co.zm
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
157

158
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Kansai Plascon
Why green is
more than
just a colour
With a legacy dating back 125 years, Kansai Plascon
not only remains one of South Africa’s premier
companies, but also one that committed towards a
sustainable, environmentally considerate future
words by Will Daynes
research by Vincent Kielty
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ] 159

W
hen a young Welshman by the name
of Herbert Evans first arrived in
Johannesburg in 1889 he probably
would never have believed that in 2014 a
company would exist that traces its history
back well over a century. It was however
the young Mr Evans who introduced the
production of floor polish, carriage varnish
and ready-mixed tinted paints to the country
of South Africa.
In the years that followed, Herbert Evans
& Co. would go on to expand rapidly, while
at the same time developing an unmatched
reputation for innovation, quality and customer
service. The success of Herbert Evans and his
company was not lost on others, specifically
Solly Rudner, an individual who would go on
to cultivate a similar reputation with Chrome
Chemicals, a company which manufactured
Plascon Paint, and other products.
The Plascon Paint brand would in fact go
on to become so popular that its success
led to the creation of a whole new business
entity, Plascon Paints and Chemical Industries,
160
[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Kansai Plascon
“The company
guarantees that
when a customer uses
its any of its seven
premium quality
paint brands”
in 1945. Within 25 years of the new entity
being established it has become a whollyowned
subsidiary of Barsab, the mining
services group co-owned by SAB and Thomas
Barlow & Sons Ltd. A year after this, in 1970,
Plascon Paints and Chemical Industries would
embark on a highly anticipated merger with
the aforementioned Herbert Evans & Co to
form Plascon Evans.
Most recently, in 2012, the company was
formally renamed Kansai Plascon following
a merger with Japanese company Kansai
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
161

Kansai Plascon
Paint, the world’s sixth largest coatings
company. Today the company continues
to drive innovation and excellence in the
retail, trade, industrial and furniture coatings
markets in South and Southern Africa, all
while championing the Plascon brand. It
does so from its three strategically placed
manufacturing sites in Mobeni, KwaZulu-
Natal, Luiperdsvlei in Krugersdorp, and
Epping in Cape Town.
Kansai Plascon prides itself on the fact that
it appreciates that a person’s home is their
greatest investment and that maintaining it
can be an expensive business. Nevertheless it
is an investment that ensures that one’s home
retains its long term value. With this in mind the
company guarantees that when a customer
uses its any of its seven premium quality paint
brands, Double Velvet, Cashmere, Velvaglo,
Bathrooms and Kitchens, Wall and All, Micatex
and Nuroof Cool, they end up with the finest
finish and long lasting results.
Kansai Plascon’s seven year Quality
Guarantee pledge on these premium brands
proves that the use of higher quality paint
reduces the overall cost of coating over
time by around 50 percent when factoring
in the paint and labour costs of having to
repaint sooner with lesser quality paints.
Plascon wholeheartedly believes that its
technically advanced products, coupled
with thorough surface preparation and
NETZSCH
The Business Unit Grinding & Dispersing,
with its headquarters in Selb/Germany,
offers a comprehensive program for the
many challenges in mechanical process
engineering. Here the Business Unit is
primarily involved in the areas of wet and dry
grinding, mixing, dispersing, de-aeration and
classifying. The laboratory- and productionscale
machines, as well as complete
production lines, are used in almost all areas
of industry, such as the forward-looking
nanotechnology, the production of paint and
ink, minerals or foods.
The bundling of processing know-how, our
extensive machine program, solutions for
customer-specific problems and our global
presence are unique and hence the strength
of the Business Unit Grinding & Dispersing.
www.netzsch.com/gd
“Equal pride within the
company stems from its
South African heritage
and with this comes a
strong sense of social
responsibility”
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
163

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[ Aug 2014 ] BE Monthly

Kansai Plascon
“The company continues to pioneer the use of
environmentally sensitive products, all the while without
compromising the exceptional standards and performance
that it has become so well known for”
correct application, will leave one’s home
protected and looking beautiful for longer.
Equal pride within the company stems
from its South African heritage and with this
comes a strong sense of social responsibility.
Kansai Plascon is actively committed to
investing in local communities and upliftment
programmes across the country, as well as
providing ongoing employee education on
environmental and health issues.
In addition to supplying paint and in
some cases, funding, to various schools,
children’s homes, orphanages and crèches,
the company’s involvement with the free
CID University in Johannesburg has helped
to train and employ many students to
carry out building and maintenance work
on the campus. Kansai Plascon is also a
member of Business and Arts South Africa,
an organisation dedicated to ensuring the
sustainability of arts across the region, and
one of its employees assists directly with their
mentoring programme.
Other important foundations and agencies
including The Wilderness Leadership
Foundation, Endangered Wildlife Trust, and
the SPCA have also received assistance from
Plascon. In East London there even exists
what the company describes as a “a very
grateful” penguin called Molly, who, thanks to
Plascon’s sponsorship after she was rescued
from an oil spill, enjoys a happy, healthy life at
the local aquarium.
Kansai Plascon also accepts and
acknowledges its responsibility towards the
encouraging of a culture that is dedicated
to progressive and sustainable solutions.
Green, the company claims, is not just
a colour in its mind. Rather what Green
represents is a commitment to implementing
environmentally considerate practices in every
aspect of its business.
Striving to inspire more ecological
considerate decisions, the company has
responded to the challenge by innovating
unparalleled sustainable solutions based
on the three key pillars of compliance,
sustainability, and products.
Kansai Plascon has successfully
implemented Environmental Management
Systems in each of its South African
manufacturing plants, and attained ISO 1 4001
certification at all of them, while it has also
continued to develop and implement groundbreaking
environmental processes to ensure
that its future remain sustainable. Lastly, the
company continues to pioneer the use of
environmentally sensitive products, all the
while without compromising the exceptional
standards and performance that it has become
so well known for.
Kansai Plascon
+27(21) 505 2400
info@plascon.co.za
@Plascon
www.plascon.co.za
BE Monthly [ Aug 2014 ]
165

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