JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Deshnee Naidoo has been appointed as CEO of Vedanta Resources’ Africa Base Metals, an entity through which its zinc and copper assets in South Africa, Zambia and Namibia will be managed.

Naidoo’s appointment signals Vedanta group’s ongoing commitment to enhancing its African operations and is seeking to identify and drive synergies across these operations in terms of operational excellence, procurement, marketing, people development, and investment in communities, in line with the group’s vision of business with purpose, Vedanta said in a statement.  

Naidoo will combine the leadership of Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), in Zambia, and Vedanta Zinc International (VZI), in South Africa and Namibia, as well as Copper Mines of Tasmania. 

In this role, she will also be KCM CEO, which coincides with the departure of KCM’s current CEO Steven Din, who will leave Vedanta in July. 

“Deshnee has successfully brought on new production at Gamsberg and won the respect and confidence of the teams that she leads. I’m delighted that we have a woman leader from Africa at the helm of our African operations. We have strong ambitions for our business in Africa and Deshnee is committed to deliver on these,” Vedanta Resources chairperson Anil Agarwal commented on Wednesday.

Speaking about Din’s move, Agarwal said, “We warmly thank Steven for all his valuable contribution to Vedanta and KCM over the last four years, where he successfully steered the business through one of the major copper price slumps. 

“He enhanced the safety culture and initiated a programme to transform KCM and aligned the workforce to Vedanta’s vision to produce 400 000 t of copper. I wish him every good fortune and thank him for his services to Vedanta, KCM and to the communities in the copperbelt and Zambia.”

Din’s departure from KCM, he added, creates the opportunity for Naidoo to step into the CEO role for KCM while the larger Africa role enables more collaboration and synergies across the continent and Southern Africa.