SA platinum titan Barry Davison passes away, aged 80

FORMER Anglo American Platinum chairman and CEO Barry Davison has passed away, industry sources said on Monday. He was 80.In addition to chairing Anglo American Platinum, Davison headed Anglo American’s ferrous metals and industries divisions. He was also an executive director of Anglo American Group from 2001 to 2005, serving under its then CEO Tony Trahar.Davison was until 2013, a non-executive director of Sibanye Gold, the forerunner of Sibanye-Stillwater. Commenting on Davison’s death, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman said he was “deeply saddened. His legacy serves as an inspiration for us all,” he said.In his pomp, Davison was a powerhouse of the South African mining sector.He led Anglo American Platinum after parent company Anglo split its platinum assets out of JCI in 1995. Throughout, Davison was renowned for his outspokenness. He sometimes clashed publicly with other mining personalities, including the equally formidable Robert Friedland, chairman of Ivanhoe Mining. This was at a time when the ANC first came to power with big plans for empowerment. Sensing the opportunity, Friedland’s Ivanhoe was muscling in on Anglo’s platinum patch at a time when Anglo was the industry’s ‘gorilla’.Later, commenting on the increase in junior miners who also wanted a piece of the platinum pie in South Africa, Davison declared: “There will be blood in the streets … and it won’t be mine!”But he is perhaps most renowned for driving a massive expansion of Anglo Platinum in 2000, in which output was to be increased to 3.5 million ounces a year from about two million oz in 1999. It was to cost an estimated R20bn in 2000 money.Was it Davison who was meant to have said: “Tell us how much you want us to mine [platinum] and we’ll dig it up? That was the recollection at the time of a meeting between Anglo American Platinum’s executives and analysts.Two years later, with the prospect of game-changing empowerment legislation in South African on the horizon, Anglo Platinum continued to be optimistic about its growth plans: “As a result of our ongoing market research, we’re satisfied that our plan to produce 3.5m oz a year by 2006 remains entirely appropriate,” Davison said in the company’s annual report for that year.Davison was spot-on about demand; it was to grow.According to data from Johnson Matthey, gross demand for platinum alone grew about a third to 7.9 million oz in 2010 from 6.2 million oz in 2001. In fact, year-on-year demand for platinum suddenly took off from about 2000, growing by 8.2%. Anglo Platinum was completely correct in planning to grow so aggressively.It was the execution that went awry.Davison later batted away these issues especially when, as an Anglo Platinum shareholder in 2009, he took then Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll to task for the precipitous decline in Amplats’s “own-production”. The cause was Carroll’s focus on improving safety, but Davison said it imperiled the group’s cost base.Davison was a director of a number of listed companies including Nedbank Group, Kumba Resources, Samancor and the Tongaat-Hulett Group.The post SA platinum titan Barry Davison passes away, aged 80 appeared first on Miningmx.Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com