CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) will bring four new mines into production by 2014, as it continues its strong growth trajectory.

“We said in 2005 that we are going to double by 2010. We’ve achieved that. We’re growing aggressively which means we will double again by 2018/19,” said CEO Andre Wilkens at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town this week.

Wilkens said that beyond 2015, there were a number of expansion opportunities in iron-ore, manganese and smelter enlargements being contemplated.

Some projects in the pipeline were also linked to rail and port capacity. He indicated that the company was working with Transnet to build further capacity in these areas. The intention was to shift transport of ARM’s products away from road to rail as “it’s safer and better from a sustainability point of view as well”, said Wilkens.

ARM mines a number of metals including platinum, nickel, ferrous metals, copper and coal, among others. The company generated 35% of its 2011 revenues from iron-ore, 22% from platinum and 22% from manganese. This, said Wilkens, left significant scope to grow the other metals in which the company had an interest.

However iron-ore was set to continue to be a strong part of the ARM portfolio, as the company’s 10-million ton a year iron-ore mine was in the process of being expanded to 16-million tons a year. Wilkens said that the project was ahead of schedule.

ARM had also recently ventured into copper through the Konkola North mine in Zambia. Wilkens said building of the mine was on schedule and should be completed by the end of 2013. Once the mine reached full capacity, production was expected to be 45 000 t/y on average.

The company is studying a second copper mine in Zambia, which had the potential to take ARM’s copper production up to 100 000 t/y.

The company had also been working on increasing production of nickel and coal through new mine ventures with partners Norilsk Nickel and Xstrata respectively. “With our partners from 2005 to 2014 we are spending R50-billion in building new mines and upgrading our facilities,” said Wilkens.

“There are four new mines that now need to add to our earnings, so the company is extremely well positioned to be financially very strong going forward.”
 

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