In this interview, Anesan Naidoo, recently appointed Head of Sustainability for Anglo American’s Marketing business, reflects on the motivation behind his passion for sustainability, key areas he’ll be focusing on, and the factors he thinks will help drive success.
At Anglo American, we are leading the way towards a safer, smarter and more sustainable future – one that delivers enduring value for our stakeholders and our planet – with Anesan Naidoo, our new Head of Sustainability for Anglo American’s Marketing business, among those leading the charge.
Growing up in Tongaat, a sugar cane farming town in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province of South Africa, 16-year-old Anesan had based his former ambition of becoming a truck driver on the tales of his uncle, who worked in the country’s haulage industry. But in Grade 10, and showing a strong aptitude for mathematics and science, the intervention of a teacher put him on a different path; one with engineering as the destination.
After obtaining a scholarship from Anglo American and completing his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Anesan started working as a junior engineer in 2001, before progressing through the ranks. After working to design, build and operate a new greenfield mine, Kolomela, Anesan moved down the value chain, becoming Head of Logistics, and Integrated Sales and Operational Planning for Anglo American’s Iron Ore business. He has spent the past five years leading the Sales and Physical Trading of Iron Ore.
Now, as Marketing’s Head of Sustainability, he will partner across the business to support the delivery of Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan, working with our partners and customers in the industries we serve to champion action, and to deliver the highest levels of sustainability performance.
We spent some time with Anesan following his appointment to get his views on why sustainability is one of society’s most important goals – bringing together our industry and those served by our customers – the journey Anglo American has been on to-date, and the responsibility we all have to protect the planet while rising to the challenge of achieving a better, more prosperous future for all.
Q. Can you share some personal reflections on the importance of running a sustainable business?
A. I think it is going to be increasingly important to operate in a way that is not only responsible, but that looks at the world through the lens of sustainability going forward. This will ensure we meet society’s needs today, while also leaving the best possible legacy behind for future generations; enabling them to not only meet their needs, but also thrive.
Businesses are created not in isolation, but exist within society. Today, being a profitable business and operating in a manner that is sustainable go hand-in-hand. I am excited to see that sustainability is, more than ever, being billed at the top of the agenda and that it is broadly understood and accepted. It’s great that we are no longer in an ‘either’ ‘or’ discussion.
I am proud to work for an organisation that puts sustainability at the heart of the corporate agenda. It touches our licence to operate, it speaks to our purpose as a company and I think, most importantly, it speaks to the purpose of many of us as individuals, myself included.
Q. What about the new role appealed to you most?
A. I was fortunate to start my career with Anglo American’s Iron Ore business as a junior engineer, working in the Northern Cape of South Africa. This provided me with the opportunity to see for myself the transformative nature of the work we do and the difference we can make to peoples’ lives, whether from an education perspective, a housing perspective, or a healthcare perspective.
As an engineer, the sustainability elements I worked on earlier in my career were more or less centered on making sure we were working as efficiently as possible – so, less water usage, less fuel, less electricity. Outside of work, I also got involved in community development, with local schools in the mining towns, for example, where I started programmes to engage young learners interested in science and technology.
Those efforts extended into working with a charity in Japan that collected and refurbished secondhand wheelchairs before sending them to people in need overseas. My father had a stroke when he was 34 and would have benefitted greatly from this because, at the time, it was difficult to get state-distributed wheelchairs and we could not afford one ourselves. I have memories, from the time when he could not walk at all, of putting him on a chair on top of a carpet and using that to slide him from room to room in our house.
As I have progressed within the company, I’ve had the chance to further guide our impact. And while I wouldn’t say my experiences as a child have consciously influenced my desire to help others, on reflection, they will certainly have factored in my motivation to help ensure we live more harmoniously with the people and environment around us.
While my formative experiences first sparked my passion for sustainability, today, I am just as excited, if not more so, about the opportunity to continue moving our world forward, to helping our customers transform and to making a difference, both within Anglo American and beyond.
Q. What are some of your key focus areas?
A. Decarbonisation is an imperative and, in line with that, Anglo American has targeted to achieve carbon neutrality in its operations (Scopes 1 and 2) by 2040, as well as outlining our ambition to reduce our Scope 3 emissions by 50% within the same year.
The steel complex generates 70% of our Scope 3 ambitions, making it one of our most important focus areas. In our efforts to tackle this, we’re going to be looking closely at our products and where we can make changes to reduce the carbon intensity of how they are processed, or opportunities to remove carbon, through sequestration and storage, for example. We’ll be working with our customers, exploring technological innovations and new ways of working that can help move the needle.
Consumers are growing ever-more conscious of where the metals and minerals in the products they transact come from, as well as their impact. Hence another area I’ll be exploring, in collaboration with subject matter experts across the broader Anglo American Group, is ethical value chains, one of the foundations of delivering more sustainable business. This will include examining things like how much water we use, how much CO2 we expel, our impact on biodiversity, the labour practices involved in our operations and more.
There is also a need to build awareness, internally and externally, about what our industry is, can and should be doing. Over the years, mining hasn’t done the best job of promoting the important role we have to play on society’s journey to net zero. We have a duty, as a key player in the industry and as part of the transition to net zero, to inform and change consumer and societal perceptions as we continue in our efforts to transform our organisation and industry more widely.
Q. What do you see as being the biggest challenge?
A. This will be a long and, at times, tough journey because things are not going to change overnight. We will need to be patient as well as persistent in driving the sustainability agenda. Ambitions, targets, plans – to the outside world, these are one and the same thing. We need to go beyond them and execute, take action.
Sooner or later, we are going to be measured not on what we say we are going to do, but on what we accomplish, so we need to have the bias for action and the bias for impact. If sustainability is front-and-centre in our thinking, we can achieve it, but it needs to be on all our agendas.
Q. What is most important when it comes to delivering against our sustainability goals. Behavioural change, technological innovation, or are there several factors that will interplay?
A. I think it is a combination of things. Technology got us to where we are today and will also help us get to where we want to be. Fundamental to that is the need, the conviction and the motivation to make this work, which then comes back to us as individuals, as companies and as governments – to create the right parameters to change behaviours and drive the transformation that is required.
A simple example is responsible production and responsible consumption. In the developed world, most of our activities still build on the ‘Take. Make. Use. Dispose.’ model of production. In fact, as things currently stand, we only recycle 8.6% of the materials we use or consume. This leaves a massive gap, of more than 90%, and a drop from the 9.1% achieved in 20181. Transitioning to an economic system in which waste and pollution are designed out, products and materials are kept in use, and natural systems are regenerated is at the core of global efforts towards circularity, and is one of the ways that, collectively, we can shape a more sustainable world and drive the shift towards a ‘Take. Make. Create.’ model.
Achieving this will depend on individual and corporate behaviours, which highlights the importance of thinking differently when it comes to our business processes, as well as how we go about our day-to-day lives as individuals. I see elements changing in the right direction, but there is a lot more that needs to be done and I am happy to be in a role where I can help influence that.
Q. What are you most proud of, from your time at Anglo American to date, as having been achieved from a sustainability standpoint?
A. While I recognise that there is still a lot to be done, I think that, overall, Anglo American is well positioned in terms of our focus on sustainability. For example, we have made the decision to take an active leadership role in setting and being transparent on our Scope 3 ambition, something that will require us to engage customers and partners closely, and that extends our approach to sustainability well beyond my remit. I am proud to be associated with a company that puts a stake in the ground like that and is working to achieve it.
1 The Circularity Gap Report 2022 (p.8), Circle Economy, https://bit.ly/3JB3cO1