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Business plan must work |
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KCM CHAIRMAN Navin Agarwal ended a three-day visit to Nchanga and Konkola reaffirming parent-company Vedanta’s long-term commitment to its Zambian interests and challenging the staff to put the 2009-2010 business plan to work.
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Mr Agarwal said it was imperative that KCM did not fall short of its ambitions as laid out in the business plan for 2009 as the company ramped up production on the way to the 500 000 tonnes per-annum target from 2011.
“Let’s not slip up on the numbers…on volumes or cost. This will expose us completely. We must deliver what we have promised in the business plan,” he said to a select group of young professionals making presentations before him and other KMC members at the Protea hotel in Chingola on the last of his visit to Chingola.
Under the 2009-2010 Business Plan, KCM envisages a year’s production of 305 000 tonnes of finished copper at 100 cents per pound down from a high of almost 300 cents per pound last October.
Mr Agarwal said the plan was practicable and he was highly impressed with the developments that had taken place at KCM in the months since he had last visited towards the end 2008, within which period the ultra-modern Nchanga Smelter had gone into operation.
Since then, however, the plant has suffered two major technical setbacks, leading to loss of production but Mr Agarwal said he was confident in the KCM management’s ability to make up for lost time and ensure there were no further disruptions to operations at the smelter.
He reaffirmed Vedanta’s long-term interests in KCM saying this was evident from the fact that while some mining houses were scaling down their operations and others folding up altogether under harsh economic conditions of the global recession, Vedanta was carrying on with its programmes and, in many cases, expanding its operations across the globe.
“The unique feature about Vedanta is that all our projects are proceeding as scheduled. We are going against the wind in expansion and growth,” he said.
He gave a brief run-down of Vedanta’s growth plans for each of its major operations covering aluminium, zinc/lead and iron and copper. Under copper, he said by 2011 when KCM was scheduled to hit the 500 000 tonnes per year mark, Vedanta’s total annual output of the metal could reach 1.6 million tonnes (with Indian, Australian and US operations included).
Mr Agarwal challenged KCM to start thinking seriously about the possibility of raising cobalt production to 5 000 tonnes/year.
During his visit, Mr Agarwal who was accompanied by Vedanta Chief Financial Officer D D Jalan visited the Nchanga Open Pit, the Nchanga UnderGround, New Smelter, Nchanga South hospital where he had a session with staff and the KDMP where he took a kibble ride to a depth of about 800m.
He said the KDMP which includes a brand-new 6 million tonnes per-annum capacity smelter was the future of KCM.
To emphasise his commitment to the development of young professionals within KCM, Mr Agarwal had dinner with another set and spent more than half an hour listening to a presentation by members of the Youth Forum at Konkola.
He reiterated the Vedanta philosophy that all the investments must be geared to helping to raise the standards of life of the Zambian people saying while KCM had to do all it could to cut costs, this could not be at the risk of discomfiting the employees or the communities in which the company was operating.
KCM would continue to be engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives that met the needs of the people, such as the early childhood care and development centre constructed in Chililabombwe to take care of marketeers’ children.
Author: Gerald Mulwanda Date Posted: 2009-05-12 |
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