Ras Myburgh, Corporate consultant
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Anglo dispatches Myburgh to help Eskom
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Wed, 28 May 2008

[miningmx.com] -- The desire by Anglo American to improve relations with the South African government was made clear on Wednesday, with the secondment of Ras Myburgh, the CEO of Kumba Iron Ore, to help power utility Eskom with its coal problems.

The agreement is for Myburgh, who has 20 years of experience both at Eskom and as head of a coal company, to work with Eskom for two years before returning to the Anglo stable, Myburgh told Miningmx in an interview.

Myburgh has been replaced with effect from 1 July by Chris Griffith, an executive from Anglo Platinum, who heads up the joint ventures within the world’s largest platinum company.
a great challenge in itself
Myburgh was approached by Eskom Engineering Enterprises managing director Brian Dames in February shortly after the force majeure declaration by the power utility, which shut down the country’s mines for a week and sliced the country’s first quarter economic growth in half to 2.1%.

“At that stage I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, given Kumba’s situation, but then they later approached the Kumba board to work something out,” Myburgh said.

Myburgh is unlikely to return to his role at Kumba once his secondment is completed. He worked at Eskom for 17 years on the power generation, engineering and coal supply negotiation fronts.

“We’ll have to work something out when I come back. Being part of the bigger Anglo group of companies… that will be finding a place within the broader group,” Myburgh said, adding the two-year period could be extended if the need arose.

He will work initially with a team sorting out coal supplies to Eskom. Part of the problems at Eskom stem from it having run down stockpiles and now having to buy at least a quarter of its coal needs on expensive, short-term contracts.

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"The coal supply issue is a great challenge in itself. That's where I'm going to start," he said. "The key here is to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future and that requires a critical look at the long-term supply strategies."

An observer pointed out this could be seen as a form of “reapproachment” between Anglo and the government and the willingness by the country’s largest diversified mining company to assist the state in addressing the power crisis.

Eskom agreed with its 138 major clients that they would decrease consumption by 10%. Some mining companies, where job losses were threatened, have been given 95% of their normal power.

The relationship between Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll and mines minister Buyelwa Sonjica is seen as strong.

“Sure, the problems are serious and overcoming them will require a lot of ingenuity, especially in energy efficiency and savings as well as the development of alternative power supplies, but we must act in unison to tackle the present situation. We will be successful,” Carroll said in early February on a shared platform with Sonjica at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

Griffith said it was too early to say what changes he might bring to Kumba.

“It’s much too early to say what I’d like to do in the future. The strategy at Kumba is only a year old and a lot of the growth plans make absolute sense in this environment to grow the business,” he told Miningmx.

“From the limited exposure I’ve had, the strategy looks sound and there’s exciting things put in place. For the time being I’ll learn about the iron ore business and Kumba,” he said.