Exxaro hosted its Annual Financial Results Presentation for its 2020 financial year and to reaffirm its ongoing commitment to powering better lives in the communities the company operates in.

“The community projects that we invest in address the current socio-economic challenges and offer solutions beyond the life of our mines for our communities to become independent and sustainable,” said Mzila Mthenjane, Executive Head of Stakeholder Affairs at Exxaro.

While the world comes to grips with the COVID-19 pandemic, Exxaro has and will continue to proudly play its part in ensuring the well-being of its employees and community members.

Skills development and training

Exxaro’s continued dedication to uplifting its staff is evidenced by the R227 million spent on training and development in 2020 – this equates to 5.04% of the company’s payroll.

More so, Exxaro also invested in 774 young people from local communities, offering them further development opportunities through the company's pipelines and feeder schemes. Feeder schemes are structured training programs for a period of time that develop young people through learnerships (artisan- e.g. electrician, diesel mechanic; miner- e.g. underground or surface miner; business admin assistant) and structured skills programs (e.g. Maintenance Operator, trackless mobile machinery, operator, plant operator, mining operator, lamp room operator).

In terms of the demographics catered for through these initiatives, an average of 43% of female participants are black women, and 92% of male participants are black men.

Local procurement

Exxaro awarded contracts to the value of R537.8 million to local vendors and of this amount, R505.3 million went to black-owned SMMEs. A total of R966.3 million was spent on 514 local vendors in 2020, with R738.2 million invested in 270 black-owned SMMEs.

By supporting local businesses to thrive and grow, Exxaro hopes to transform the South African economy.

Enterprise and Supplier Development

Exxaro distributed a total of R79.8 million in funding through its Enterprise and Supplier Development (ESD) programme in 2020. R36.7 million of this amount was spent on supporting 10 local enterprises, while the remaining R43.1 million went to 14 Exxaro suppliers.

The ESD programme's total funding from its inception in 2018 to date is R438.1 million for 68 qualifying beneficiaries. Key demographics on the 68 beneficiaries is as follows: -

· 35.3% are majority youth owned.

· 36.8% are at least 30% women owned.

· 2.9% are majority owned by people with disabilities.

Monitoring and evaluation of companies supported by the ESD programme is underway. Preliminary findings from a sample of 30 (14 in 2018, 16 in 2019) out of the 68 supported enterprises indicate that:

· 1,230 jobs have been retained.

· 958 new jobs were created.

· Increase in turnover of R554.3 million was achieved.

Response to COVID-19

Exxaro has contributed R200,9 million to various pandemic response initiatives since March 2020. This includes R75.8 million towards building and managing COVID-19 testing labs, a R20 million donation to the Solidarity Fund to support South Africa's healthcare system, humanitarian efforts and campaigns for behavioural change and R4.6 million on improving water and sanitation infrastructure, supplying food parcels, and providing personal protective equipment (PPE) to local communities.

The company also invested R9.3 million to set up isolation and quarantine facilities for employees to support local public health departments.

Additionally, Exxaro provided R18.2 million worth of support to 18 ESD beneficiaries to assist beneficiary business operations. This was either in the form of either loan repayment holidays (for 15 beneficiaries) or funding (for 3 beneficiaries) to enable beneficiaries to resume and scale up operations.

These results are a prime example of the saying "put your money where your mouth is", perfectly illustrating Exxaro's purpose of powering better lives in local communities (Africa and Beyond).

Visit our INVESTOR page for more information - https://www.exxaro.com/investors/financial-results