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March 2015
MODERN MINING
39
SURFACE MINING
CONTRACTING
feature
a highly competitive market
Tati Nickel’s Phoenix open-
pit mine near Francistown
in Botswana, where Aveng
Moolmans has been work-
ing since 2002.
has 15 to 20 % of its fleet standing. “We’re not
unique in this – all our competitors have the
same problem. In fact, one of the larger equip-
ment suppliers has told us that around a third
of the global surface mining fleet is currently
parked so we’re probably doing better than
most. Obviously, in this situation we have no
immediate plans to invest in new kit – although
we wouldn’t shy away from new invest-
ment should the right opportunities present
themselves.”
White, who describes himself as “a civil
engineer with an identity crisis”, started his
career as a civil engineering student with what
was then LTA in 1982 but soon transferred over
to Moolmans (which by then was part of the
LTA Group). “Moolmans was still at that stage
mainly a roads and earthworks contractor but it
was already starting to move into mining,” he
recalls. “So I ended up as a civil engineer work-
ing mainly in the mining field.” Since those
early days, White has worked for Moolmans
all over Africa and in 1997 became GM of
Moolmans’ West African operation, which saw
him relocating to Accra in Ghana. He has been
an Executive Director of Moolmans since 1999
and in February 2012 succeeded Brian Wilmot
(who moved on to become head of Aveng
Mining) as MD of the company, by then known
as Aveng Moolmans.
According to White, an interesting fea-
ture of Aveng Moolmans’ current workload is
that almost two-thirds of it is in South Africa.
“We’re down to about 35 % of our turnover
coming from outside our borders, which is a
complete reversal from two or three years ago
when cross-border work accounted for about
70 %,” he says. “This change is not by intent
and we intend restoring our footprint around
Africa but at the moment it’s a case of fishing
where the fish are – and that’s South Africa.”
Aveng Moolmans now only has one con-
tract in the West African region compared to
three several years ago. “This is at Sadiola in
Mali where we’ve been continuously working
since the mine was established in the mid-90s,”
notes White. “I suppose the problem we’ve had
in West Africa is that we were over-exposed
to a single client and to a single commodity,
gold. We’ve always been aware of this and
we have tried to diversify in the region. For
example, about 18 months ago we targeted the