Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – Krzysztof Skora, the new CEO of KGHM, plans to lower the costs of copper production and increase the trust of investors against his company. First, however, he is going to sum up what the previous management did.
Krzysztof Skora, the new CEO of KGHM copper producer, said in an interview for “Puls Biznesu” that he is going to verify the plans of the previous management in the long-term and this year’s strategy.
“The changes are necessary because people who were supposed to implement them did not guarantee they would do that. Production costs have constantly been growing (by 100 percent within four years), no one was controlling this”, Krzysztof Skora said.
He added that both people and plans will be changed. In the middle of April, KGHM will present its new strategy, including the list of projects that will be implemented. The company have withdrawn from the plans to implement a PLN 100m (EUR 25.4m) IT project.
“There were some mistakes. We want to repeat the proceedings and decide which elements are necessary to manage the production”, KGHM CEO said.
As far as foreign expansion is concerned, KGHM is analyzing the project in Congo.
“KGHM has too little concentrate to produce copper. The plants have much bigger capacity, they may soon grow to 700,000, or by 50 percent. If we want to keep production at the same level and not to be forced to buy expensive concentrate, we must make some decisions”, Krzysztof Skora said.
The CEO refused to give details concerning other possible sites, including China and Mongolia.
In May, KGHM will present the report of the state of the art in the company.
“We want to show the decisions of the previous managements and what were their results. We’ve lost PLN 1.7 billion on hedging transactions only”, Krzysztof Skora said.
He enumerated lower costs, new rules of rationalizing projects and bigger trust against the company as the most important tasks for him.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.254)