Glencore Plc will meet with the South African government this week to seek ways to prevent smelters that make a key stainless-steel ingredient from shedding thousands of jobs as they grapple with surging power prices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japie Fullard, chief executive officer of Glencore Alloys, will meet Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Friday in an effort to save its venture with Merafe Resources Ltd. that processes chrome ore into ferrochrome, the executive said in an interview. A ministry spokesperson confirmed the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa, home to the world\u2019s largest deposits of chrome ore, has struggled with expensive and often unreliable power supply, leading to the closure of furnaces and shifting the stainless-steel supply chain overseas \u2014 mainly to China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Power costs have surged eightfold since 2008, according to the Energy Intensive Users Group, whose members account for about 40% of the nation\u2019s electricity consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While electricity deals with state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. have been negotiated in the past, \u201cthe discount that they gave us is not sufficient enough for us to be able to be competitive toward China,\u201d Fullard said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy feeling is that they really want to help,\u201d he said of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sustained decline of South Africa\u2019s ferrochrome industry started due to a lack of power supply as China\u2019s advantage grew with cheap electricity and labour, according to Fullard, who\u2019s been forced to shut down the Rustenburg and Lydenburg smelters in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In June, South Africa\u2019s government approved a plan to support the ferrochrome industry, by agreeing on new electricity tariffs as well as introducing controls and taxes for exports of chrome ore. Those reforms are yet to be finalised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keeping operations on hold is costing Glencore billions of rand, something the company is only able to do until the end of the year as time is running out to find a solution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m still paying the people a hundred percent their salary without creating one ton of ferrochrome,\u201d Fullard said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Glencore will meet with the South African government this week to seek ways to prevent smelters from shedding thousands of jobs as they grapple with surging power prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":836585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[9693],"class_list":["post-837688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-glencore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837688"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837690,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837688\/revisions\/837690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}