BusinessLive reports that Impala Platinum (Implats) is cutting its future production to 520,000oz of platinum and slashing the number of its mines to six from 11, with 13,000 jobs to go within two years.
Implats is the latest mining company to announce a major restructuring, shaft closures and job cuts to cope with a high-cost environment, and, in the platinum sector, a largely stagnant price for its primary metal, platinum. “In a phased approach, operations will therefore cease at Impala Rustenburg’s end‐of‐life and uneconomic shafts, with future mining activity focused on profitable, lower-cost, high‐value, and longer‐life assets,” the company said. The restructuring will cost R2.7bn during 2019 and 2020, and will be funded from internal cash resources as well as selling inventories. Implats presently employs 40,000 people. It could consider selling some of the shafts it is planning to close, said CEO Nico Muller. He added: “While employee rationalisation is inevitable in a restructuring process of this nature, due care will be taken to ensure that job losses are minimised as far as possible through a range of job-loss avoidance measures.”
- Read this report by Allan Seccombe in full at BusinessLive
- Read too, Implats to shed 13,000 jobs over two years, at Mining Weekly
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