Corporate Social Responsibility

The Group has pledged its compliance to the Broad Based Socio Economic Empowerment Charter, as well as committed itself to Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment (BBSEE):

The Broad Based Socio Economic Empowerment Charter. The Charter has been developed to provide a framework for progressing the empowerment of historically disadvantaged South Africans in the Mining and Minerals Industry. The objectives of the charter are to:

  • Promote equitable access to the nation's mineral resources to all the people of South Africa; 
  • Substantially and meaningfully expand opportunities for HDSA's including women, to enter the mining and minerals industry and to benefit from the exploitation of the nation's mineral resources;
  • Utilise the existing skills base for the empowerment of HDSA's;
  • Expand the skills base of HDSA's in order to serve the community; 
  • Promote employment and advance the social and economic welfare of mining communities and the major labour sending areas; and
  • Promote beneficiation of South Africa's mineral commodities.

Broad-Based Socio-Economic Empowerment (BBSEE) is a social or economic strategy, plan, principle, approach or act, which is aimed inter alia at:

  • Redressing the results of past or present discrimination based on race, gender or other disability of historically disadvantaged persons in the minerals and petroleum industry, related industries and in the value chain of such industries; and 
  • Integrated Socio-economic development for host communities, major labour sending areas and areas that due to unintended consequences of mining are becoming ghost towns by mobilising all stakeholder resources.

In April 2009 the Company lodged its intended Black Economic Empowerment (“BEE”) transaction with the former South African Department of Minerals and Energy (“DME”), now the Department of Mineral Resources (“DMR”), as the final element of its previously submitted application to convert its old order mining rights to new order mining rights under the South African Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA). The transaction envisages the sale of the business and assets of the Company’s South African operating subsidiary, International Ferro Metals SA (Pty) Limited (“IFMSA”), to a new IFM subsidiary (“Newco”) at fair value with consideration for the purchase to be fully funded by the issue of debentures and preference shares. The issue of these instruments results in Newco having a nominal net asset value upon implementation, enabling it to issue 26 percent of its equity to the BEE parties for a nominal amount. The BEE parties are the surrounding communities, the staff and an entrepreneur.  The effective date of the transaction is shortly after the DMR converts the old order mining rights, which is expected to occur in 2010.