Vuslat Bayoğlu

VUSLAT Bayoğlu is a fierce supporter of South African coal production – Menar Group has seven million tons in run-of-mine capacity – but it was to manganese that he turned in June last year. That’s when Menar, in a joint venture with South Africa’s former deputy finance minister, Mcebisi Jonas, bought Metalloys, a mothballed ferromanganese facility near Johannesburg, from South32 and Anglo American. The plan is to make Metalloys (to be renamed ‘Khwelamet’) energy-efficient by installing two blast furnaces producing about 500,000 tons a year of ferromanganese. “Reinvest, reindustrialise and create jobs,” said Bayoğlu of $100m in proposed investment. Menar also needs to supply Khwelamet with one million tons of manganese ore annually. 

East Manganese, the mine Menar opened in 2021, is now exhausted. This means Menar must make a case for the underground mining of its Kongoni, a 50-million-ton deposit. Bayoğlu is waiting on an improved manganese price, which was volatile last year, doubling following the loss of capacity at South32’s GEMCO facilities, then ‘correcting’ several months later. 

Bayoğlu is an outspoken critic of renewable power and state abuses. The transition to public-private partnership in rail – to be contained in state-owned company Transnet’s Network Statement – needs to be correctly thought out, he has said. He rejected Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s plea for miners to cut their Eskom coal contract prices. Lower revenue into cost mining does not go, Bayoğlu calculates. “You will lose me,” he said, fighting for entrepreneurs everywhere in South Africa.