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MODERN MINING
May 2015
COMPANIES
P
art of the JSE-listed Eqstra
Group, MCC (or MCC Con-
tract Mining & Plant Rental,
to give it its full name) has
now been in business for
over 40 years – it was started in 1972 as a plant
hire company – and owns and operates one of
the largest fleets of mining and construction
equipment in Africa. It diversified from plant
hire into mining in the early 1980s and contract
mining now accounts for the bulk of its annual
turnover of approximately R4,7 billion a year.
While MCC is currently operating profitably
(it recorded a R6 million profit before tax in the
six months to 31 December 2014), the returns
it has been delivering over the past couple of
years have not been impressive given its asset
base, as Colling readily acknowledges. “Clearly
we’ve got work to do and we’re busy with a
recovery plan. We’ve let ourselves down but
the good news is that there is not too much that
is wrong with the company as it has the right
people in place, the right systems in use and
the right equipment in its fleet,” he says.
A civil engineer by training, Colling – if one
looks at his track record – is the almost per-
fect choice to lead MCC. He joined Moolmans
(now Aveng Moolmans) in 1992 and went on to
spend 18 years with the group, which is gen-
erally recognised as being the largest open-pit
mining contractor in Africa. Most of the con-
tracts he worked on were within South Africa
but he was also based in Tanzania for sev-
eral years, running the Moolmans contract at
MCC
pushes the reset button
Justin Colling, CEO of MCC
Contract Mining.
Below:
MCC machines,
including a Liebherr 984
excavator and a TR100
mining truck, working at the
Karowe diamond mine in
Botswana (photo: Lucara).
MCC, one of South Africa’s best known opencast contract mining companies, has a
new CEO at the helm. He is Justin Colling, who has notched up almost 25 years in the
contract mining field and whose brief is to reinvigorate an organisation that has
seen some loss of market share. He says that he has pushed the reset button on the
MCC business. “We need to get back to doing the basics right,” he says. “Contract
mining is in many ways a straightforward business but we often complicate it
needlessly. By just putting the focus back where it should be, we’re already
starting to see results.”