JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Platinum miner Anglo American Platinum’s (Amplats’) Rustenburg subsidiary plans to shed up to 420 jobs as it “redesigned” the organisational support structure and consolidated its operations to improve its financial sustainability.
Rustenburg Platinum Mines (RPM), which on Tuesday issued Section 189 notices for mostly managerial and supervisory positions, aimed to restructure its operations into “large, more efficient mining complexes benefitting from increased scale and less complexity”.
Voluntary severance packages and comprehensive support measures would be on offer as the Tumela and Dishaba mines, as well as the Amandelbult concentrator, were consolidated into the Amandelbult operation, and the Mogalakwena mine and Mogalakwena concentrator into the Mogalakwena operation.
Further, RPM planned to shut its regional functional centres in Rustenburg, Amandelbult and Polokwane, with the adjacent operations and the headquarters absorbing their functions, while seeking to “further substantially reduce” indirect costs allocated to the operations.
Employees at the Rustenburg and Union mine operations were protected from these reconfigurations as the operations had been put up for sale.
The 60-day consultation process would be completed on August 22.