With the global demand for almost all commodities continuing to rise, State-owned minerals and metallurgy researcher Mintek's outgoing CEO Paul Jourdan was optimistic that the global commodities boom would last for “at least another 15 to 20 years”.

He said that the commodities boom would go on for as long as China and India continued their growth patterns of 10% and 8%, respectively, and that this boom was resulting in a high demand for process development and test work.

Speaking at the company’s full-year results presentation, in Johannesburg, Jourdan said that international mineral exploration spending had reached a high of some $7,5-billion (around R54-billion), and that about 16%, or $1,2-billion, had been earmarked for African projects.

He said that the new expansions were bringing new challenges, which required the development of new technologies. Mintek was expecting to increase service work in uranium, nonferrous metals, and platinum group metals, he added.

But, the boom, which Jourdan described as “spectacular”, was “both a blessing and a curse for Mintek”.

“Blessing in the sense that we have never had so much work, and such interesting work, and curse in that the companies are desperately short of skilled people.”

Mintek had an unprecedented loss of skilled personnel to the private sector, and with a staff turnover of about 19% in the last financial year, the single biggest threat to the company’s research and development capacity was retaining and attracting experienced engineers and scientists, he wrote in the Mintek annual report.

Meanwhile, the company reported that its total income had increased by 12% to R320-million, and that the Auditor General (AG) had expressed an unqualified audit opinion on its annual financial statements.

Last year, the AG, which by law audits Mintek, said that an opinion on the group’s financial statements could not be expressed, owing to its failure to follow prescribed procedures, accounting errors, and missing documents.

Mintek appointed a professional organisation and skilled employees to tackle the issue of noncomplicance, and promised, at the time, that it would have its financial statements in order by 2007.

Jourdan will be succeeded as CEO by the Department of Minerals and Energy's Abiel Mngomezulu, who starts with the company on Monday.

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