Public sector miner, NMDC, is set to enter into a joint venture with Kopano Ke Matla Investment Company, the investment arm of South Africa’s largest trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) for acquiring manganese, coal and iron ore blocks in South Africa.
NMDC Chairman and Managing Director Rana Som said the joint venture company will jointly bid for the South African blocks.
A joint working group will be formed once the memorandum of understanding (MoU) is signed. For any operating mine, Kopano will take the lead in initiating discussions with the South African government, while for exploration, NMDC will identify potential blocks.
Som said it would be an equal joint venture. “We have said, we are only interested in manganese, coal and iron ore.”
Industry sources said a joint venture with Kopano would help facilitate acquisitions in South Africa, since Kopano was known to have political contacts.
Kopano’s sole beneficiary is Cosatu, and the company has investments across sectors like logistics, resources, communications and financial services.
Kopano strives to select ventures that directly contribute to the empowerment of workers and the communities in which they live.
Among the defined objectives of the organisation are ensuring a deliberate strategy, reflected in all investments, which will secure circulation of capital in deprived areas of the country, as also, ensuring participation of black businesses in the mainstream economy.
Som said the terms of contract had already been sent to Kopano. The joint venture with Kopano will be one of the many partnerships that NMDC had forged in the recent past.
NMDC has MoUs with Spice Minerals and Metals, part of the Spice Energy group, and another with Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mineral resource company. Som said: “We have asked Rio to submit definite proposals for properties, which would be evaluated.”
The state-owned miner was also in the process of entering into joint ventures for its thermal coal operations, for which four companies had been shortlisted, said Som.
NMDC has been allotted two blocks in Madhya Pradesh and was expecting allotment of a coal block in West Bengal’s Birbhum, which happens to be among the five largest coal deposits in the country, with estimated reserves of two billion tonnes.
