MIKE Teke, CEO of Seriti Resources, said his company was interested in diversifying the firm’s portfolio which is currently concentrated on thermal coal.
The company bought Anglo American’s domestic coal mine production in 2017, and is in the process of completing the purchase of the domestic and export coal producing facilities in South Africa of South32, a Sydney-listed firm.
He told Bloomberg News: “We are going to take over several businesses that are not in coal. I want us to build a strong, formidable mining company.”
This could even extend to renewable energy to complement its current focus on fossil fuels. “If it happens that we see an opportunity in the renewable energy space, we will look,” said Teke. There were “immense opportunities” across the commodities space, including in chrome, manganese and iron ore, he told Bloomberg News.
A reliable transition from fossil fuels to renewables is needed, according to Teke. Exxaro Resources, another South African coal producer, has begun to diversify its business to include wind farms, said the newswire.
Teke told Miningmx in 2017: “We want to build something really big in the league of Anglo. We want to create a mining champion.”
Teke, a former CEO of Optimum Coal Holdings as well as chairman of Richards Bay Coal Terminal and president of the Chamber of Mines (now Minerals Council), has in the past expressed an interest in eventually listing Seriti Resources.
