Newly named Cementation Africa excited about setting business on new growth path

This audio is brought to you by Astec Industries, a Global Leader in manufacturing equipment for infrastructure, including asphalt production, construction, and material processing, driving innovation and sustainability. The newly named Cementation Africa is excited about setting the rebranded business on a new growth path. As part of preparations to operate outside of the Murray & Roberts Group, the new "own entity" has begun its rebranding and renaming process. "We're extremely excited to continue under the Cementation brand. It's been a brand that we've been operating under prior to the merger with Murray & Roberts about 21 years ago. "So, it's almost going back to our roots and we'll be utilising the same branding as our sister companies in the Americas and Canada, so that there's consistency in branding and naming conventions. "We have our focus on Africa, hence the name Cementation Africa," Cementation Africa MD Japie du Plessis outlined Engineering News & Mining Weekly in an interview. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.) The rebranded Cementation Africa will continue to provide the same services to its clients. It will continue to do shaft sinking, decline sinking, contract mining, and bulk excavations, with raise drilling and underground mining services continuing as specialities. Its own in-house mine engineering design office will continue to offer design services to enable mammoth underground construction work and its world-class training academy in Carletonville will continue as one of its big contract mining differentiators. Engineering News & Mining Weekly: Why has the name of your company been changed from Murray & Roberts Cementation to Cementation Africa? Du Plessis: I think you're aware that the Murray & Roberts Group, and more specifically Murray & Roberts Limited, is currently in business rescue, and as part of the business rescue process, a consortium of investors led by the Differential Capital investment company, has bought out the mining businesses, both the mining business in South Africa, which is the business I'm leading, as well as the American business, the Canadian business, and they're buying that out of the Murray & Roberts Group. As part of our preparations to operate outside of the Murray & Roberts Group, as our own entity, we've started the rebranding and renaming process of our business. What are the implications of this rebranding for yourselves and for the greater mining community? For us, it's an opportunity for a new start. We've had two very challenging years that have passed, and for us it's almost a reset button that we can hit and we can steer the business in a new direction with the support of our new shareholder and without corporate drag and unsupportive shareholders. We're excited to embark on this new journey. Our new shareholders trust the management team. They believe in this business. It's a good business and we're looking forward to setting this business onto a new path of growth. Give us insight into the specialised underground mine design and construction services that you offer. We do all our own design and fabrication for our temporary services on all projects where we execute. We also do permanent infrastructure designs for our clients, ranging from headgear to shaft infrastructure designs. We design pump stations, loading stations, bulkheads, underground substations. If you can think of any, any requirement for underground mining, we can design and build it. We really do everything from feasibility all the way through to detailed design, fabrication, and then our project teams execute. Over the past two decades, a large number of mine shafts have been sunk by yourselves. What is distinctive about Cementation Africa's shaft-sinking know-how? We've really done a lot of shafts, about 15 000 m of shafts over the last two decades. It's something that we're extremely proud of, and I think what's distinctive is that we know how to sink shafts safely. We have, over m...