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November 2015
MODERN MINING
43
feature
CONSULTANTS/
PROJECT HOUSES
Above:
VBKom staffers
pictured at the company’s
internal brand launch
earlier this year.
Strauss Oosthuizen
VBKom’s stand at the seventh WaCA (West Africa and
Central Africa) Mining Summit and Expo, held in Accra in
May this year. Pictured (from left) are VBKom’s Nolo Lahasa,
Eduan Pieterse and George Olivier.
Director, says it was occasioned in part by
client pressure. “It was clear to us that many,
probably most, clients wanted to deal with a
single company offering a ‘one-stop’ seamless
service,” he explains. “In addition, there was
a certain amount of brand confusion between
the various companies. So we decided to make
the necessary changes and the new structure
was launched in July this year. Given that we
were restructuring in terms of our branding
and internal organisation, we also decided to
re-strategise the business at the same time. In
essence, we now offer seven niche services
over three revenue streams or commodity focus
areas and in three geographical regions.”
Elaborating, Pieterse says the commodity
focus areas are ferrous metals, energy (primar-
ily coal and uranium) and precious and base
metals and industrials (or PBI). “In each of
these areas, the niche services we offer are min-
ing engineering, industrial engineering, risk
management, geology, simulation and decision
support, financial modelling and project sup-
port,” he says. “Geographically, we also intend
spreading our wings as we have traditionally
mainly worked in South Africa and Namibia
– although we have also carried out contracts
for clients in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and are
currently working for ENRC in the DRC. We
now want to also target West Africa and Central
Africa with our goal being to reduce depen-
dency on the Southern African market and also
increase our non-Rand-based revenue.”
In respect of West Africa, VBKom is using
Ghana as its entry point to the region. It has
already visited the country on a number of
occasions, including with South Africa’s
Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), and
has also developed a relationship with the SA