South Africa’s Astron ‘a nice short to have for the trading business’ – Glencore
JOHANNESBURG –
Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg on Tuesday described his company’s investment in
Astron Energy oil refinery and fuel distribution station business in South
Africa as “a nice short to have for the trading business”.
The Chevron oil refinery in Cape Town and the Caltex brand
now fall under Astron Energy, a Glencore Group company.
In response to Mining Weekly during a post-results media
briefing, Glasenberg noted that Glencore’s oil division saw a benefit on the
trading side of having outlets in various countries. Currently these include
South Africa, Mexico and Brazil.
“We bought Astron about a year ago. It’s got the refinery in
Cape Town and it’s got all these distribution outlets. It’s something we like
in the oil trading division. We can supply crude into the refinery and then
distribute from there. So, it’s a nice short to have for the trading business
and it fits our portfolio.
“We’ve also got a large amount of distribution stations in
Brazil. That’s a business that our oil department has developed slowly and
we’ll see how it goes and that’s how it operates in South Africa,” Glasenberg
said.
In a deal valued at $1-billion, Glencore partnered black
economic empowerment consortium Off The Shelf Investments in the acquisition of
Chevron South Africa. Astron Energy now has a number of years to transition
away from the Caltex retail branding. The acquirer must also invest some
R6-billion into the Cape Town refinery, which has a crude oil input capacity of
110 000 bbl/day.
In Brazil, Glencore Energy in 2018 signed an agreement to
acquire 78% of Ale Combustíveis, Brazil’s fourth-largest fuel distributor,
which has a network of 1 500 stations in 22 states and about 260 convenience
stores. This followed investment in the Mexican downstream sector through G500.
SOLAR POWER
On the impact of Eskom load-shedding on its ferrometals
plants and coal mines in South Africa and the prospect of Glencore generating
renewable solar energy for its own use here, Glasenberg said the Glencore team
in South Africa was looking into various forms of renewable energy generation
at the existing operations. Glencore already produces its own wind energy at
its Raglan nickel mine in Canada.
Comments
Post a Comment