EXXARO AND GIBS EMPOWER SUPPLIERS AND UPLIFT COMMUNITIES

from SA Mining July/August 2023

HYBRID CRUSHERS ARE MORE SUSTAINABLE

The Exxaro GIBS Contractor Development Programme (CDP) aims to support the advancement of suppliers from Exxaro’s host communities by delivering business education and mentorship. Since the CDP’s launch in November 2020, the programme has seen more than 65 entrepreneurs graduate, equipped with improved management skills and performance.

The CDP has received positive feedback from previous beneficiaries, leading to an overwhelming demand to continue the programme in 2023. Exxaro believes that the partnership with GIBS benefits entrepreneurs and empowers them to run their businesses more efficiently and effectively, establishing a foundation and pathway for future personal and business growth.

“We saw it fit to continue with the GIBS partnership and bring on another 66 business owners to benefit from this valuable programme, which is progressing the diversification of our suppliers and localisation of procurement,” says Mongezi Veti, Exxaro’s executive head for Sustainability and chairman of the Enterprise and Supplier Development Steercom.

“We have recently refined our social impact strategy to give greater focus to uplifting communities. We are expanding opportunities through partnerships to facilitate success with just skills development and mineral succession programmes for effective agricultural use of rehabilitated mine land,” says Veti.

The CDP contributes to local economic development in Exxaro’s host communities by empowering suppliers who create job opportunities, cascading into broader community benefits.

Exxaro aims to increase the number of black-owned contractors participating in core areas of the mining value chain through this, and some 116 companies have benefitted from the ESD funding since the programme’s inception in 2018, with over 2000 employment opportunities created in the same period.