https://www.miningweekly.com

South Africa’s Astron ‘a nice short to have for the trading business’ – Glencore

18th February 2020

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

     

Font size: - +

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg on Tuesday described his company’s investment in Astron Energy oil refinery and fuel distribution station business in South Africa as “a nice short to have for the trading business”.

The Chevron oil refinery in Cape Town and the Caltex brand now fall under Astron Energy, a Glencore Group company.

In response to Mining Weekly during a post-results media briefing, Glasenberg noted that Glencore’s oil division saw a benefit on the trading side of having outlets in various countries. Currently these include South Africa, Mexico and Brazil.

“We bought Astron about a year ago. It’s got the refinery in Cape Town and it’s got all these distribution outlets. It’s something we like in the oil trading division. We can supply crude into the refinery and then distribute from there. So, it’s a nice short to have for the trading business and it fits our portfolio.

“We’ve also got a large amount of distribution stations in Brazil. That’s a business that our oil department has developed slowly and we’ll see how it goes and that’s how it operates in South Africa,” Glasenberg said.

In a deal valued at $1-billion, Glencore partnered black economic empowerment consortium Off The Shelf Investments in the acquisition of Chevron South Africa. Astron Energy now has a number of years to transition away from the Caltex retail branding. The acquirer must also invest some R6-billion into the Cape Town refinery, which has a crude oil input capacity of 110 000 bbl/day.

In Brazil, Glencore Energy in 2018 signed an agreement to acquire 78% of Ale Combustíveis, Brazil’s fourth-largest fuel distributor, which has a network of 1 500 stations in 22 states and about 260 convenience stores. This followed investment in the Mexican downstream sector through G500.

SOLAR POWER

On the impact of Eskom load-shedding on its ferrometals plants and coal mines in South Africa and the prospect of Glencore generating renewable solar energy for its own use here, Glasenberg said the Glencore team in South Africa was looking into various forms of renewable energy generation at the existing operations. Glencore already produces its own wind energy at its Raglan nickel mine in Canada.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION