Konkola Copper Mines Appoints New CEO

Konkola Copper Mines has appointed Steven Din as the Chief Executive Officer, effective today, 12th May 2014. Din has a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Bradford University and is a Chartered management accountant. Din has held various Africa positions for mining giant Rio Tinto in the past with his most recent position being as CEO – Minerals for an Essar Africa project in Zimbabwe. He will be taking over from embattled predecessor Kishore Kumar (CEO of Vedanta’s Africa base-metals business) who had previously held the post twice in the last 4 years.

Steven Din will be taking over at a time when things have not been going smoothly with the miner. Last year, his predecessor had his work permit revoked after a wrangle with the government over potential layoffs of over 1,500 KCM workers. KCM was also part a number of mines whose VAT refund payments totaling more than $500m were being withheld by the Zambia Revenue Authority because the miners were not complying with a regulation which compelled them to provide import receipts from the country of destination of their commodities. And on top of everything else, electricity tariffs were increased by 28.8% to the chagrin of the mining sector earlier this year. Vedanta Resources (parent company of KCM) owns 80% of the mine and the government owns 20% through ZCCM Investment Holdings.

KCM generated $1.74bn (up 1.9% year-over-year) of revenue in financial years 2013 which translates to 11.7% of Vedanta’s group revenue. Operating profit was down 76.5% year-over-year to $51.9m. KCM’s 2013 copper output was 216,000MT, up 8.2% year-over-year. The company aims to produce over 400,000 tonnes of copper, upon completion of its flagship, Konkola Deep Mining Project (KDMP). 

Is Steven Din up for the challenge? He certainly has a lot of big challenges to work through!