Photo by: Duane Daws
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – JSE-listed speciality chemicals group AECI’s explosives division AEL Mining Services will look to grow and consolidate its South African market share, while reducing its local cost base and advancing its international expansion strategy.
At an investor day on Wednesday, AEL CEO Schalk Venter said the bulk emulsion explosives business had deliberately and substantially grown its share of the surface opencast mining market in the country, as it continued its strategic alignment with South Africa’s narrow reef sector.
“There is still good growth offered locally, which we intend to leverage through our front-end service. We want to protect our South African [operations],” he commented.
Venter’s comments came a day after AECI disposed of the bulk of its surplus property assets in Modderfontein, Gauteng, to a Chinese diversified property development company for R1.06-billion.
Meanwhile, AEL would also pursue greenfield and brownfield acquisitions in Africa, expecting total cumulative revenue growth from the continent of R1.57-billion between now and 2017.
The company’s focus on the continent would remain on opportunities in the gold, copper, iron-ore and coal mining sectors.
Elsewhere, AEL would continue to advance its penetrative strategy into Indonesia – a country in which the division already owned nine emulsion manufacturing plants supporting nine mine sites.
“We’ll also look to international expansion in other targeted regions, but we haven’t identified our big ‘step out’ market in this regard yet,” Venter said.