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May 2015
MODERN MINING
29
COMPANIES
Resolute Mining’s Golden Pride gold mine. He
later became a director of Moolmans and man-
aged its South African operations.
He left Moolmans in 2010 to join Leighton’s
mining division – the world’s biggest contract
miner – in Indonesia as GM Mining and ended
up running Leighton’s entire Asian mining
operation, including two gold mines and sev-
eral coal mines in Indonesia, a gold mine in the
Philippines and a coal mine in Mongolia. He
resigned from Leighton last year – the mining
division by then had been rebranded as Thiess
– to return to South Africa.
Colling took up his new position in January
this year and spent his first few weeks visiting
all the MCC sites in order to gain a thorough
understanding of the company’s operations.
Explaining his vision for the company, he
emphasises that his goal is not for MCC to be
the biggest mining contractor in South Africa,
just the best. “To be the best we need to not
only give returns to our shareholders but also
delight our clients by providing an efficient and
economic mining service,” he says.
Elaborating on MCC’s relationships with its
clients, he notes that true partnerships are now
called for. “There was a time when you would
win a contract and that was the end of the story.
You would do what you were paid for without
any thought of adding any real value. Those
days are now gone. The commodities down-
turn has left most of our clients under pressure
and we need to recognise this fact and work
closely with them to ensure that their projects
remain viable. Ultimately, the success of MCC
depends on the health of its customer base.
There’s no point in MCC making profits if its
clients are making a loss. That’s not sustainable
over the long term.”
Since taking over as CEO, Colling has
changed the leadership at some sites but says
that in general he has not had to make any
sweeping changes to the management struc-
ture at MCC. “We have excellent people within
the organisation – they just need the right
leadership and it’s my task to give them the
clear direction they need and to put in place a
strategy that everyone understands.” He adds
that he has no intention of micro-managing
his contract managers. “I’m a firm believer in
empowering people. If you believe that some-
one’s the right person for the job, then you need
to give them the freedom to make a difference.”
Colling concedes that the present market is
extremely difficult and notes that competition
is so fierce that it is not uncommon to see over
30 contractors at a site inspection. “This pres-
ents us with a dilemma. On the one hand, you
don’t want to ‘buy’ work. On the other, you’re
not going to win contracts unless you put in
very keen prices. So really the challenge for
us at MCC is to make sure that we contain our
costs and operate extremely efficiently so that
we are in a position to put in competitive bids
and yet still remain profitable. This is precisely
what we’re doing and we’re currently putting
Centre:
A 650-ton
Liebherr 996 excavator
loads a Cat 793 truck at the
Benga site in Mozambique.
Below:
MCC apprentices
in training. The group has
several thousand employees
and operates extensive
in-house training
programmes.