There are many challenges facing the mining industry and have credible procurement systems is one of them. According to Mining Procurement & Supply- East Coast of Australia, their 2013 report indicated that some of the challenges around mining procurement included:

• There are numerous pressures related to supporting the business to deliver cost
• efficiencies, due to the external market environment. Delivery to business plan is a
• key focus for all functional support areas due to the market, and the key enabler will
• be cost optimisation.
• Suppliers might not be around in 6 months, considering that they are facing a
• decrease in demand and prices.
• Timelines for major deliverables and projects might not be met if your supplier is
• downsizing or seeing decreased profit.
• It’s not guaranteed previous commitments will be met.
• Recent or current tendering processes might not be adequate enough to guarantee
• supply chain security.
• Building win-win relationships is a lot harder due to economic pressures.

“A significant percentage of our Company budget expenditure goes through the procurement unit that contracts suppliers of various goods and services”,  said the ZCCM IH CEO Mabvuto Chipata recently at a procurement workshop at Protea Chisamba where a joint collaboration with ZPPA was conducted.

“These goods and services are particularly administrative and investment related, from hiring machinery for projects, undertaking of environmental project briefs, exploration services, consultancy services, supply of branding collaterals to supply of cleaning services among others.”

Procurement is becoming a strategic asset for mining companies. ZCCM IH understands this and hence why it was important to conduct the workshop so that it can beef up its internal knowledge systems. Workshops such as this one allow for staff to identify strategic issues around procurement in mining.

“As such, the effective and efficient management of both the revenue and the cost side of the business is key with this renewed strategic focus. Cost management for instance in operations and acquiring of various equipment and other services is necessary for us to achieve the set revenue targets”.

This is why the CEO has all the confidence that workshops such as this will contribute to creating a sustainable business environment for his investment group. “I therefore have no doubt that the introduction of an electronic procurement system within our procurement unit will lead to increased efficiencies and transparency”.