The road ahead: No longer at the coalface

As South Africa celebrates a generation of freedom, Anglo American acknowledges its deep roots in the country and looks ahead to its contribution in the next 25 years and beyond. Over the next five weeks experience 25 Reasons to Believe with City Press as we explore the economy, job creation, enterprise development, health, land reform, sustainability, education, technology and – most important of all – the communities. 

When it comes to what the mine of the future will look like, July Ndlovu, the CEO of Anglo American’s coal business in South Africa, is taken with the idea that it looks no different from a farm. This might sound far-fetched, and it is – for now.

Ndlovu’s industry change is already here – not only the urgent changes needed to mitigate the climate crisis, but the technological advances that will change the face of mining. The most exciting part of this technological change for him is “taking people out of harm’s way, from a safety and health point of view – taking them away from the coalface”.

With its remaining coal operations, the company is taking whatever steps are possible throughout the coal value chain to reduce the fossil fuel’s footprint. This is in line with reaching the goals Anglo American has set regarding being a trusted corporate leader, ensuring its communities thrive and maintaining a healthy environment.

Ndlovu also says that, globally, the pressure on the use of coal as a resource will continue to increase and the share of coal within the world’s energy mix will remain steady over the next decade, while the share of renewable energy picks up significantly.

For Ndlovu, one of the most exciting aspects of his business is how it is able to create jobs down the value chain, and he is heavily invested in uplifting women, saying it is “our national aspiration”.

“Last year, we brought people in from the local communities to our inclusive procurement day and I made a bold declaration – and my supply chain team is tearing its hair out,” he laughs.

“I said: ‘We want to have doubled our procurement spend with black-owned small businesses by 2020.’

“The reality is that big companies don’t create jobs, we don’t. Jobs are created by these small entrepreneurs and I think this is the way we are going to start seeing a change in jobs beginning to be created in and around our communities, and, if we do it right, these are sustainable jobs because we give them capacity and skills not just to do work for us, but for anybody else.

“I think we have to play a role because, ultimately, what people are looking for is access to markets. We are the market and we can help with that. The second thing they lack is skills, and we have got the skills and knowledge. If we bring those two together and seed it correctly and responsibly, I think that is the foundation for creating jobs in the future. It is not going to be new big mines; we are not going to create those jobs.”

He also believes the work Anglo American is doing in the FutureSmart Mining™ space is revolutionary: “A vision that appeals to me is that I could walk on a mine and that it would all look the same as if I was walking on a farm. That is so different a paradigm in mining. Even if we don’t get there and we only get halfway, I think we will have changed society forever.

“What we are starting to grapple with are some of the most intractable problems from a sustainability point of view in mining – energy and water. We are thinking about how we stop using water in our processing plants, which are significant consumers of water, and we compete with society for water, by the way. And I think that is quite an exciting breakthrough. Is it going to be easy? Maybe not. But we are beginning to see some green shoots that are quite exciting.

“How we significantly reduce the amount of energy we use in mining is quite an interesting breakthrough. Whether that means you upgrade the ore before you process it so you are handling less and less material. It not only has an energy benefit, but it also significantly reduces our environmental footprint. We look at these things in an integrated way, and because we are looking at it in a much more intentional way, we are making much more progress than ever before. That is quite exciting for me.”

Though the challenges are many for a person heading up a coal business, Ndlovu says that what gets him up in the morning is that “we make a huge difference in people’s lives and, therefore, what we do matters”.

“I had never quite internalised this issue in my mind until I got into coal, which is that the products that we produce can make the most difference to people’s lives – look at what is around you, someone probably mined it at some point. So, when we in Anglo American crafted this purpose that said to reimagine mining to improve people’s lives, I started looking at the things we do through a completely different lens. Coal provides cheap, accessible, secure, resilient energy to power development and to get people out of poverty. If you don’t give people power, I think it is a pipe dream to think people will get out of poverty.”