Anglo American plc, which owns De Beers has provided an update on its performance during 2023 and setting out capital expenditure and production guidance for the next three financial years. De Beers jointly owns diamond operations in Namibia with the government.
Duncan Wanblad, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “The prospects for mined products have rarely looked better. In the near term, given continuing elevated macro volatility, we are being deliberate in reducing our costs and prioritising our capital to drive more profitable production on a sustainable basis. We are focused on what we can control – safety, operational discipline and capital allocation. We are confident in our actions to sustain the competitiveness of our world class assets and deliver on our outstanding growth opportunities in the metals and minerals that are so critical now and for generations to come.”
Wanblad said Anglo is building a platform for strengthened and sustainable operational and financial performance.
He added that the company took early action in 2023 to increase business resilience in the face of ongoing economic and geopolitical volatility and the current cyclical weakness in Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) and diamonds.
“As a result, we have already gone a long way towards reducing our business support costs by US$0.5 billion by mid-2024, with an additional US$0.5 billion in annual cost efficiencies identified across our global businesses that we expect to deliver in 2024.”
He said operationally, the company is improving cost performance and cash generation by reconfiguring a number of its assets to adjust the production profile to near term constraints and market conditions, and thereby also protect longer term value. This includes reducing production at Kumba in line with prolonged logistics constraints, focusing on higher margin own-production through its PGMs processing facilities, and moving to one plant at the Los Bronces copper operation in Chile.
“As a result of such initiatives, we expect to deliver lower unit costs in 2024, despite high inflation, and US$1.8 billion lower capital expenditure in the 2023 to 2026 period.”
