Amre Youness and the Africa Mining Boom

On the Amre Youness blog there was recently a story from the Financial Times, highlighting the fact of how emerging market companies from places like Kazakhstan, China, and Brazil have a natural affinity to do business in other emerging markets, such as in Africa and Asia.


The Amre Youness blog highlights the following excerpt:

"There's no doubt ENRC is after Northam Platinum for more than a 12 per cent stake," says Rob Edwards, head of mining and metals research at Renaissance Capital. "They are going for consolidation at some point." The R2.2bn (£194m) purchase in effect gives ENRC a blocking stake. 

ENRC's move has made waves in the platinum industry in South Africa, where three-quarters of the world's platinum reserves are located. The stake in Northam gives ENRC a rare entry point into the highly consolidated industry. 

But getting a bigger share in Northam depends on South Africa's Mvelaphanda Resources, the seller, which is in the middle of a messy unbundling involving all the complexities of "black economic empowerment" policy. That carries a risk for any ENRC stake-building strategy. 

"We have an appetite for risk," Mr Cochrane says. "Many others don't have the convictions we have about the future of these countries in Africa." The purchase of Camec also gave ENRC assets in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. "If you want to invest there, you really need to have a conviction that Africa is going to be a different place in 20 years." 

As ENRC has pushed outward, some analysts have drawn unfavourable comparisons to Kazakhmys, which has neither ENRC's balance sheet nor its commodity spread. Indeed, one of Kazakhmys's most valuable assets is its 26 per cent shareholding in ENRC. 

They control IMR, and ENRC's push into Africa has brought IMR out of the shadows. Long before ENRC's 2007 flotation IMR had investments across Africa. They included the Chambishi copper smelter in Zambia, which IMR sold to ENRC in February for $300m. The deal was deemed a "smaller related party transaction". 

IMR's other assets include Samancor, the South African ferrochrome producer. "We have bought a number of assets from IMR but we would not say IMR is an incubator for ENRC acquisitions," Mr Cochrane says. 

He adds: "Clearly the founding shareholders have relationships and that helps us whether in Africa or Kazakhstan." 

The doors that IMR opens makes ENRC's Africa strategy - as well as its entire international expansion - less spontaneous than at first glance. 

The strategy, however, still raises the question of whether miners based in developing countries - such as Brazil's Vale or China's Chinalco - have an inherent affinity for emerging markets that makes them more competitive in other emerging markets. 

In January, Johannes Sittard, ENRC's chairman, told the Financial Times the company brought its emerging markets experience to bear when evaluating whether to buy Camec. 

"In the 1990s if you asked the question: 'Should I invest in Kazakhstan?', there would be people who would say you were crazy. Here we are," he says.

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