Modern Mining February 2016

EVENTS

a shadow over the Mining Indaba

as uncertain as ever,” he said, adding that he believed the South African mining industry was in the middle of an existential crisis and faced “a potent cocktail of ever increasing costs and declining revenues.” As is the case every year, many of the indus- try’s heavyweights presented at the Indaba or participated in the many panel discussions that were held. They included Anglo American’s Mark Cutifani, AngloGold Ashanti’s Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan (universally known as Venkat), Ivanhoe’s Robert Friedland, Rio Tinto’s Alan Davies, South32’s Graham Kerr, Lonmin’s Ben Magara, Vedanta’s Tom Albanese and Randgold Resources’ Mark Bristow. Many executives of junior and mid-tier min- ers also addressed delegates, among them Clive Johnson of B2Gold (which has developed the Otjikjoto gold mine in Namibia and is build- ing the Fekola mine in Mali), Dr John Clarke of Banro, which has two gold mines in the DRC, R Michael Jones of Platinum Group Metals (which has just produced the first concentrate at its new Maseve platinum mine) and Brad Gordon of Acacia Mining, the biggest player in Tanzania’s gold mining sector. Space does not allow an exhaustive dis- cussion of these presentations but a common

uncertainty and the MPRDA Amendment Bill. “Unfortunately, the Minister provided very lit- tle detail as to how he was going to give effect to any of these undertakings, leaving investors

The scene in the exhibition area. There were roughly 230 exhibitors at this year’s event.

February 2016  MODERN MINING  31