21 Feb 2016

BCL Mine managing director Mr Dan Mahupela has said that his organisation is due to introduce belt tightening measures to ensure its survival.

He said BCL will reduce its expenditure by 60 per cent and increase the smelter revenue. He said the smelter will increase production by processing more concentrate to bring in more revenue. Mr Mahupela said this addressing the Selebi Phikwe Town Council full council meeting.

He said the mine will stop operations at some of its shafts because it is getting costly to mine the mineral ore while metal achievement from all the mine shafts is low.

He noted that more concentrate to be processed at the smelter will be sourced from BCL’s Tati Nickel Mine in Francistown, Nkomati Mine in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Europe.

However, he mentioned that average nickel prices in the market remain a challenge as commodity prices dropped very low by roughly 73 per cent. He also mentioned that BCL Mine will reduce some of its services.

He said currently the mine is running at a loss, raking in P1.6 billion annually instead of the targeted P3.2 billion. Regarding the shutdown, he said the mine experienced a 71 percent loss during the period of the exercise, which started end of July and ended in November last year.

He explained that the shutdown process took longer than usual because some parts were delayed from overseas.

“BCL was spending during the shutdown period with no production taking place to bring in income and this resulted in BCL slipping into financial challenges,” he said.

Mr Mahupela touched the issue of safety at the mine. He said recently the organisation experienced fatal accidents.

He said the mine discovered that regulations used at the shafts were not fully coherent with the overall regulations, laws and constitution of BCL Mine, which resulted in mistakes taking place and accidents occurring. He also mentioned that accidents that occurred involved youthful employees.

He said that they discovered that they were ignorant of some safety measures and procedures.

However, he assured council leaders that the problem has been rectified. He said his organisation has commenced continuous training of employees on safety measures to ensure that accidents do not occur again.

BCL Mine communications and marketing manager Mr James Molosankwe indicated that internal communication has been taking place regarding safety at the mine.

He also mentioned that information regarding BCL Mine business and the challenges the mine was facing was communicated to employees and stakeholders.

He mentioned that nickel prices in the international market have gone down resulting in 70 per cent of nickel mines around the world closing down. He said 2015 recorded the lowest price of nickel in 10 years. ENDS