ESG CASE STUDY: HARMONY GOLD
US$2,067
investor relations have pivoted towards virtual communications, and Steenkamp comments that “platforms such as Deutsche Bank’s Depositary Receipts Virtual Investor Conference have been ideal for reaching out to international investors and telling our story”.
Steenkamp shared his story with flow during a phone call in March 2021, one year on from when Covid-19 restrictions were first enforced across the globe. “When lockdown first hit South Africa on 27 March [2020] we went into complete shutdown,” he recalls. “But during that time, we were involved in a couple of virtual investor conferences and meetings including Bank of America’s annual Sun City conference and we spoke to many investors.”
Harmony’s IR team and management also jointly hosted a large number of investor meetings in the space of two months. These meetings demanded they demonstrate their passion, enthusiasm and engagement skills to allay investor concerns about South Africa being in a hard lockdown (‘alert level five’) with all mining activity suspended. “Investors
The price of an ounce of gold reached a record high in August 2020
were asking what it meant for the company and what we were going to do about it,” says Steenkamp. The team successfully managed their expectations, assuring them that Harmony was still generating income from its open-pit mines and surface operations, while selling its gold to the Rand Refinery, which was considered an ‘essential service’.
In May 2020, the South African government relaxed restrictions to level four, which allowed mining operations to resume, albeit at only 50% capacity (full mining capacity was to be permitted at alert level 3).
In addition to these ‘crisis’ meetings with investors, Harmony implemented a proactive IR campaign in March 2020 at the onset of the lockdown to assure investors of employees’ safety and to mitigate any ESG concerns. This included
radio campaigns and the development of a Standard Operating Procedure to help prevent transmission of Covid-19 at Harmony’s South Africa and Papua New Guinea sites. “We also converted many of our hostels into isolation areas, while our medical hubs at our operations, which are run by professional nurses and doctors, were in full operation,” says Steenkamp.
In line with ‘responsible stewardship’, which is one of Harmony’s four strategic pillars, and the driving force of its ESG strategy, Steenkamp explains that the company also “looks after the community where our mines are based and explains what they need to do to protect themselves from Covid-19”. The company distributes food parcels, sanitising equipment and protective face masks. “The entire mining sector pulled together and worked in unison during the hard lockdown,” he recalls. “The mining industry has always been at the forefront of managing communicable diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, to name but a few.”
Harmony’s mining operations are in close proximity to areas where these
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