Easy access at the tip of your fingers, subscribe to our daily ePaper version of our New Era Newspaper.
Home / Vedanta Resources places a woman at the helm of Africa Base Metals
Vedanta Resources places a woman at the helm of Africa Base Metals
2018-05-17Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter WINDHOEK - Vedanta Resources this week announced the appointment of Deshnee Naidoo, as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Africa Base Metals. Naidoo’s appointment signals the Vedanta group’s ongoing commitment to enhancing its African operations and will seek to identify and drive synergies across these operations in terms of operational excellence, procurement, marketing, people development, and the investment in communities, in line with the group’s vision of business with purpose. Naidoo will combine the leadership of Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), in Zambia, and Vedanta Zinc International (VZI), in South Africa and Namibia, as well as Copper Mines of Tasmania. In this, role she will also assume responsibility of CEO of KCM and will drive synergies across ZI and KCM. Her appointment coincides with the departure of Steven Din, KCM’s current CEO, who will leave Vedanta group this July. Naidoo joined Vedanta Resources in 2014 with over 20 years’ experience in the resources industry, including platinum, thermal coal and manganese. Before that, she was Chief Financial Officer of Anglo American Thermal Coal, South Africa. As CEO of VZI, she will lead the development of the US$400 million Gamsberg Project, which will come into production in mid-2018, as well as the development of the Pit 112 Project at Skorpion Zinc. Chairman of Vedanta Resources, Anil Agarwal commented, “Naidoo has successfully brought on new production at Gamsberg and won the respect and confidence of the teams that she leads. I am delighted that we have a woman leader from Africa at the helm of our African operations. We have strong ambitions for our business in Africa and Naidoo is committed to deliver on these.’’ KCM is one of the most attractive resource assets in the world with potential to reach 400 ktpa of integrated copper production in the near term. The Southern African operations have the potential to become one of the largest zinc producing regions in the world, while the investment in KCM will enable Zambia to become the largest copper-producing country in Africa. “We warmly thank Steven for all his valuable contribution to Vedanta and KCM over the last four years, where he successfully steered the business through one of the major copper price slumps. He enhanced the safety culture and initiated a programme to transform KCM and aligned the workforce to Vedanta’s vision to produce 400 000 tonnes of copper. Steven’s departure creates the opportunity for Naidoo to step into the CEO – KCM role whilst the larger Africa role enables more collaboration and synergies across the continent and Southern Africa,” said Agarwal 2018-05-17Staff Report 2
