Falling metals prices will hit Africa hard

January 5, 2009 at 7:41 AM EST

SUBJECT: The impact of collapsing base metal prices on the mining sector in Central and Southern Africa.

SIGNIFICANCE: Initial hopes that the global economic downturn would be shallow and short-lived are being replaced by a realization that it is likely to be deep and protracted. When an upturn does come, miners now expect an extended period of far more modest growth.

ANALYSIS: The five year across-the-board rally in commodities, which drove up prices to historic peaks in mid-2008, collapsed in the space of three months between August and October as the secondary effects of the international credit crisis rippled through the world economy. This slump caught mining houses and host governments completely off guard, and created an arc of contraction across the mining sector in the Central and Southern African region:

The price of copper fell from its peak of about $4.10 (U.S.) per pound to under $1.40 per pound, and cobalt fell from $53 per pound to about $13 – with all other base metals registering similar quantitative declines.

Similarly, resource nationalism – which had been given considerable impetus by record commodity prices – is now in retreat, whether in the form of: demands by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for greater investor spending on social infrastructure schemes; Zambia's schedule of new taxes on windfall profits; Botswana's diamond beneficiation initiative; or South Africa's new draft mining royalties legislation.

DRC reversal. While Africa is generally seen as being insulated from wider turbulence in the world economy, the DRC is an example of where the reverse has proved to be the case. Despite being one of the countries least integrated into the global economy, it has already suffered one of the greatest impacts as a result of the downturn.

With prices for most base metals currently at two-thirds of their earlier peaks, and futures contracts being exchanged at or below their marginal cost of production, any hopes of reviving the country's long-dormant mining industry have now largely evaporated. Most of the 61 foreign mining companies which returned to the country after the 1998-2003 conflict – including Sicomin, the Sino-Congolese joint venture – have been forced to scale back, postpone or abandon their investment plans: Katanga Mining, Anvil Mining, and the Central African Mining and Exploration Company (Camec) have already suspended some copper and cobalt operations, and further shutdowns are expected. BHP Billiton has announced its intention to withdraw from two diamond exploration agreements, forcing its joint venture junior partners to consider following suit.

De Beers has put much of its exploration efforts on care and maintenance status. Funding for mining projects from French bank BNP Paribas – currently facing a legal challenge over its attempts to acquire Belgian financial group Fortis, which has extensive mining interests in the DRC – could now collapse entirely.

Freeport McMoRan, the world's largest publicly traded copper producer, announced in December that it would slash output by 200 million pounds (90,000 tonnes) in 2009 and 500 million pounds (225,000 tonnes) in 2010 – almost 2 per cent of world supply – from its high-cost North and South American mines while it reviews operations in North and South America, Indonesia and Africa.

Freeport is the major investor in the DRC's Tenke Fungurume deposit, on which it has already spent in excess of $1-billion. The mine is due to begin production early 2009, eventually producing some 500,000 tonnes of copper a year. Given the scale of the downturn, and the effect Tenke's additional production would have on prices, it too is likely to be postponed.

Even Sicomin is haggling over its first mining rights down-payment, and trying to backtrack on its agreement with Kinshasa to lift 10 million tonnes of copper over the next 15 years.

By December, the Ministry of Mines had reported that more than 200,000 jobs had been lost in the mining sector, both formal informal, with a further 200,000 expected in the coming months as the industry in effect goes into hibernation. State revenues from mining are collapsing, companies are complaining of fiscal harassment by government, and the prospect of new revenue streams needed to finance the DRC's post-conflict reconstruction will not now materialize – perhaps for some years.

President Joseph Kabila's Peoples Party for Reconstruction and Development, which leads the 11-party Alliance for the Presidential Majority, is facing mounting popular frustration and political criticism at the lack of progress. Moreover, the protracted government-sponsored mining review, which – with the backing of the World Bank – sought to rebalance contracts signed with foreign mining houses in favour of the state, is increasingly being seen as a policy blunder that has deprived the country of a limited opportunity to lock in foreign investors during the boom years. The review is now complete, but talks have been suspended with Freeport McMoRan, First Quantum, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Banro Corporation and Mwana Africa.

Zambian slowdown. Unlike its more turbulent neighbour on the western side of the Central African copper belt, Zambia had made considerable progress resurrecting its mining industry from the near collapse experienced at the end of the 20th century, which has transformed Zambia into the continent's most important copper producer and exporter: Six months ago the country's biggest problem was how to raise the finance needed to build extra power generating capacity required to ensure the continued expansion of the mining sector, which was on target to reach 600,000 tonnes of copper in 2008, and 1 million tonnes by 2010, as a series of new copper and cobalt mines came on stream.

In contrast to the DRC, Zambia had from the outset gone out of its way to court foreign investors on highly concessional terms – e.g. by offering minority government stakes in joint ventures, and low royalty and tax regimes. The strategy was highly successful in luring back the international mining industry, which saw investment inflows increase year by year.

Data collected by the Zambian treasury shows a foreign investment upsurge which has seen in excess of $3-billion invested in the mining sector since 2000, when the mines were effectively written off by Anglo-American, which sold off and pulled out. The drive was led by Canada's First Quantum Minerals, London-listed Vedanta Resources – which operates the Konkola Copper Mine, Zambia's largest copper producer – Australia's Equinox Minerals, Switzerland's Glencore and China's construction of a $250-million copper smelter at its Chambishi concession.

Relations between government and miners soured in April when Lusaka announced a rollback of earlier concessions by introducing a new tax regime in which royalties rose from 0.6 per cent to 3.0 per cent, corporate taxes increased from 25 per cent to 30 per cent, along with a new windfall profit tax of 25 per cent, and a variable profit tax of 15 per cent on taxable income above 8 per cent. The effect of the package was to increase mining taxes from 31 per cent to 47 per cent, which the government calculated would generate $415-million per year in additional revenue.

However, by October mining revenues had begun to fall dramatically. Total copper export earnings dropped 32.6 per cent to $758-million in the third quarter of 2008, compared with $1.2-billion the previous year. Although Zambia has not and is unlikely to experience a contraction on the scale suffered by the DRC, the government acknowledged that the extra revenues from the April tax changes would not materialize, and announced its willingness to renegotiate those increases with investors.

Most of the key players had already committed significant resources well in advance of the credit crisis, but frozen credit markets have made it increasingly difficult for those seeking additional finance to sustain or expand mining projects. In addition, by the time Rupiah Banda won the presidential by-election in November, Zambia had been forced to freeze all nonessential projects in an effort to keep its budget deficit below 2 per cent.

The government had been planning a significant expansion in power generating capacity, notably construction of the $1.5-billion, 750 megawatt, Kafue Gorge Lower hydroelectric power station. The feasibility study is due to begin in 2009, but construction is now likely to be delayed. Moreover, the downturn can be expected to result in a significant fall in foreign investment across the sector, and a big increase in job losses. The government's decision on Dec. 17 to withdraw as host of the 2011 All-Africa Games on cost grounds is an indication of how serious and protracted Lusaka expects the downturn to be.

Botswana and Zimbabwe. Declining demand for diamonds will have a severe impact on government revenues in Botswana due to its heavy reliance on the sector. Despite being a well-run country, falling income from royalties, corporation and export taxes, and income and consumption taxes, can be expected to have an accelerator effect on declining government receipts, which will become progressively more serious the longer the downturn lasts.

Zimbabwe has the second-largest reserves of platinum after South Africa, and had managed to increase production despite the country's mounting political and economic chaos. Impala Platinum, the world's second-largest producer and the leading foreign investor in Zimbabwe via Zimplat Holdings, along with Anglo Platinum, a division of Anglo American, both have long-term plans to expand production.

However, these plans are on hold because of the steep decline in demand for catalytic converters caused by the crisis in the world auto industry, along with the growing consensus that the country has now entered the dying days – and possibly bloody end – of the Mugabe regime. Moreover, the precipitate contraction of the mining industry will make the turmoil of Zimbabwe's protracted collapse increasingly difficult for the region to absorb.

South Africa. AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields and Harmony, South Africa's top three gold producers – all of whom received a boost when gold touched 1,030 dollars per ounce in March – have since fallen on harder times as prices have sunk to below the cost of production at about $850 per ounce. Margins are shrinking as companies descend ever deeper to dig out a wasting asset, pushing up costs and heightening safety concerns as government becomes increasingly impatient with industry fatalities:

Gold. Gold output is steadily falling as the world's former dominant producer – now in second place behind China – struggles with rising costs, shrinking margins, erratic power supplies, increased labour militancy and new mining royalty and mine safety laws which industry analysts fear will accelerate the sector's secular decline.

Platinum. While the investor flight to safety has helped buoy gold prices, platinum has fallen dramatically from its peak of $2,250 per ounce in May to about $930 currently, after dropping under $800 in October. Lonmin, the world's third-largest platinum producer, having fought off a hostile $10-billion bid from Anglo-Swiss miner Xstrata in November, was first to announce mine closures along with 5,500 job losses.

Layoffs. The mining sector as a whole is now bracing itself for in excess of 10,000 layoffs in the coming weeks and months, and a significant upsurge in labour militancy, which will coincide with elections due in April. Only Anglo Coal, Anglo American's coal division, appears insulated from the downturn as a result of its contract to boost supplies to Eskom, the state-owned generator, in an effort to avoid a repetition of last January's power cuts.

BEE effect. The commodity price collapse now also threatens scores of black economic empowerment (BEE) companies, many of which took part in deals in the mining sector. In the absence of black capital, deals have been financed almost exclusively by debt, and rested on the assumption that share prices, like house prices, could only go up. Now that financial reality has hit home, it is feared that around 50 per cent of the estimated $48-billion worth of all BEE deals executed hitherto may now have to be written off by the banks.

M&A outlook. BHP Billiton's failure to acquire Rio Tinto, Xstrata's retreat from Lonmin, and Rio Tinto's acquisition of Alcan – which has left it heavily indebted at a time of sharply declining prices – is likely to signal the end of mining sector merger and acquisition activity for the foreseeable future: Although many small and mid-cap miners remain vulnerable to takeover – particularly those who have gone out on a limb in Africa – potential acquirers are likely to remain picky for some time.

Even Chinese companies, whose cash-rich miners are scouring the continent for bargains, have been urged by Beijing to hold back, on the rationale that candidates for acquisition will still be there in six or 12 months but at an even greater discount.

CONCLUSION: Early expectations that the current mining sector downturn would prove temporary, pending the return of the supercycle, are now being seen by mining houses as illusory. The large-scale postponement of mine expansion plans, together with the mothballing of existing productive capacity, would indicate that a recovery would first have to absorb a large dormant capacity before prices began to recover sufficiently to justify investment in new mining projects.

From the Oxford Analytica Daily Brief

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