The Sibanye juggernaut keeps on rolling. Formed in 2013 as a spin-off that retained Gold Fields’ deep-level and labour-intensive bullion assets in South Africa, the company has expanded aggressively into platinum. It has picked up, among others, the Rustenburg assets of Anglo American Platinum and the high-grade and palladium-rich Stillwater operation in the US state of Montana. Now, in an all-share deal, it has swallowed troubled platinum producer Lonmin.
Lonmin was formerly the platinum mining unit of Lonrho, the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company Limited, incorporated in 1909. For decades in the late 20century, it was run by “Tiny” Rowland, a corporate raider and maverick whom the former British prime minister, Edward Heath, said represented “an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”.
There are still plenty of challenges and plenty of hard decisions ahead. When the deal was announced late in 2017, 12,600 job cuts were envisioned by Lonmin. One of the regulatory conditions of the merger is a six-month moratorium on enforced retrenchments, so nothing immediate on that scale will happen. And improved economic circumstances mean the cuts may not be so massive. Sibanye, meanwhile, will review all of the shafts that are coming into its fold.
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