“It has been a difficult few months. I’m glad I am now able to sleep,” Dan Mahupela says with a wry smile in his face.
He has just finished briefing the media about his rescue plan not just to turn around BCL, but to also literally save it.
From their line of questioning, it is clear the ever skeptical swath of journalists present do not share Mahupela’s exalted optimism.
To be fair to the man, BCL has come a long way from where it was a few months ago when the nickel miner had thick dark clouds hanging all over it.
Exactly two months ago this time, Mahupela’s name was top among a gilded list of chief executives who the media predicted would not make it. He would have to be sacked to save BCL, media houses said in turns.
BCL was struggling to pay salaries to staff. Like vultures seeing a beast that is about to die some of the company’s key creditors and suppliers were circling ever closer to what they saw as a walking carcass.
The bigger trouble for Mahupela was that the shareholder was literally not taking his calls.
It is a measure of his personal resilience that the BCL chief has somewhat survived the storm.
At the company’s darkest moment, it was a foregone conclusion that Mahupela would have to be sacked, if not by his Board of Directors then at least at the instance of Botswana Government who are the sole shareholder of BCL.
BCL is not out of the woods yet, but Mahupela has not only survived, he has also lived to tell the story.
When he descended on Gaborone early this week he had come to deliver his final verdict.
BCL, he said remains a strong business.
It is a business that will however have to change if it is to survive, he said.
The reforms would no doubt be painful, but their administration is the only way to save the patient, he said.
Assuming the language of a diplomat that he is not, he said BCL would be doing “staff rationalization” which is in effect a euphemism for retrenchments.
His side is that the troubles at BCL have got nothing to do with his management.
Rather it is a result of commodities price cycle that has busted, affecting not just BCL, but every mining house in the world.
Mahupela is adamant that in two years time things will be back to normal at BCL. He is staking his hopes on a reversal of the downward spiral in the prices of nickel, a metal that is used in the manufacturing of stainless steel.
Exactly what his optimism is based on is for now difficult to explain, save to say that the current turbulence besieging commodities the world over are cyclical, hence predictable and can easily be plotted and mapped on a time scale graph, so to speak.
For now his biggest and immediate challenge is to reconfigure BCL finances so that the business can be viable at the going price of $4 an ounce nickel price.
It will be a toll order that will include laying off staff, selling some company assets including houses and a corporate jet that he purchased during the commodity price boom.
As the press conference progresses it becomes apparent to a trained eye that there is a thick sense of injustice lurking around the BCL boss.
It’s clear from his demeanor that he perceives the media, if not the problem, then certainly a big part of it. During the press conference his subtle attitude to the media quickly vacillates from that of impatience to thinly veiled irritation.
He is clearly offended by the line of questioning that harps on governance at BCL.
While there is truth in the fact that Mahupela and BCL have been dealt a difficult hand by commodity prices, there is a strong view by Government from where the media takes its cue that continues to make insinuations that BCL would be in a healthier financial bill had the company’s finance department been responsive enough.
“No I do not agree with that,” says Mahupela.
So damning were these allegations that Mahupela had to reluctantly and somewhat grudgingly get rid of his finance director. While this big decision might in the end have saved his own job, BCL insiders say it was a decision that deeply pained him.
“He is loyal to those who work for him and expects the same from them. Sacking a colleague, especially a trusted one does not come naturally to him,” said a BCL official.
Mahupela remains an engineer at heart. His juniors art BCL say he shuns formalities because he finds the whole formal regiment not just alien to the virtues of mining but also restrictive as to be offensive.
It is an attitude to work that was forged while he was a young engineer working for Debswana Diamond Company in the early 1980s.
The son of an Anglican lay preacher, there is nothing preachy about Mahupela. He is upfront, extroverted and immensely opinionated.
A friend from their days at Debswana says Mahuplela has always found it easy to speaks his mind.
“He refuses to defer to authority. His view is that the problems at BCL have been blown out of proportion. While he privately concedes that there might have been problems with the finance department, he is overall adamant that BCL is a victim of commodity prices that have collapsed by more than half,” said his friend from Debswana.
When he was appointed BCL Managing Director following the departure of the fabled Monty Mphathi, miners at Selibe Phikwe celebrated.
Low ranking miners felt at ease in his company.
His straight talking attitude that is often mixed with street lingo appealed to them.
His mannerisms, etiquette and general dress code show little appetite for the formal self-enforced regiments as embodied by business attire and a formal suit and tie.
And if he could have his way, even as Managing Director of one of the country’s most important flagships, Mahupela would rather keep his open shirts and sweaters.
He makes no attempt to hide his frustrations that easily border on anger at the ongoing insinuations that his flagship reforms at BCL, popularly known as Polaris have been a waste of money.
But during the press conference it is clear that he struggling with some success to put on his best behavior.
With the media around, and clearly on a tight leash from his publicity team, there are no swearing words hurled around. Still traces of his irrepressible personality keep peeping out.
“It is wrong for anyone to say Polaris has been a waste of money. The real value of Polaris is currently sitting under water. It will be there for all to see once prices improve,” he says, clearly taking a jab at those intent on casting doubts over the potential of his pet reform project to make BCL a world class miner.
The magnitude of problems besieging BCL should not be overstated.
While the world commodity prices are expected to get worse before they get any better, the business fundamentals at BCL remain solid with a potential to grow both organically and inorganically.
This is highly important especially when looked at against what other mining houses are doing across the world.
While Mahupela is talking about selling the company’s luxury jet and houses, elsewhere companies in similar conditions like BCL have had to either sell or close down core assets like mines.
BCL for its part is talking a different language.
The smelter, by far the company’s most prized asset has recently undergone a major refurbishment to a tune of close to a P1 billion.
And up until the commodity price crunch, BCL was on a streak of major acquisitions that have included buying Tati Nickel Mine in Francistown and also Nkomati near the South Africa/Mozambique border. Both transactions are a part of the Polaris project whose utility has recently come under immense scrutiny.
For all its troubles, Mahupela still has huge ambitions for BCL.
Just over a month ago the company got a P1 billion pula lifeboat from the market.
Mahupela and his charges are quick to point out that it was not, as the media reported wrongly reported a government underwritten loan, but rather a facility offered against BCL balance sheet.
