He Goes "Hillside"
Hillside is the largest aluminium smelter in the southern hemisphere and is based here in Richards Bay. Bauxite is mined in Boddington, refined into alumina in Collie, and then shipped out of Bunbury to Richards Bay (phew!). It is then transferred to the smelter, where an exorbitant amount of electricity is applied to turn it into aluminium ingots which are then marketed world wide (for not much, going on recent figures from the London Metal Exchange).
When I say exorbitant amounts of power, I mean exorbitant - 6% of South Africa's TOTAL power supply! This might explain why there were three hours of blackouts for those of us at home trying to do our washing in the suburbs today...
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| Part of the smelter |
There is a government policy in South Africa called Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). The basic idea behind this policy is that companies earn points for the number of black or coloured people directly or indirectly employed (with black women scoring more points). Points then entitle the company to enter contracts with government agencies and other similar benefits.
The role of Supply Manager at the smelter has become vacant, with BHP's aim to staff it with an appropriately qualified black woman. The recruitment process is underway, with an estimated time frame of 6 to 9 months to recruit and train a successful candidate. So for the meantime, Simon is using my darkest foundation every morning and getting quite used to tottering around site in steel capped high heels. In between toilet breaks to touch up his makeup, he's also acting as the Supply Manager for the smelter.
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| The administration block - Simon's office is behind the deadish looking tree. |
Working Conditions
As with schools over here, work starts comparatively early. Simon arrives in the office at 7am and works through until 5. Normally William and I drop him off on the way to school, and venture out again to pick him up in the evening. It's proving quite a novelty to have him home for dinner each night, although as he has a massive cooked lunch at work everyday, he's not usually that hungry.
Anyone who knows Simon's love of food will be tickled by his excited daily reports of the five food options on the BHP lunch menu, "Today, I had veg biryani with rice and naan bread..."
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| Dressed and ready for work! The domestically disinclined will note that both Simon AND William are wearing polo shirts (that is 10 less shirts to iron per week!!) |
As well as the internal cultural differences, there are external ones too. Try managing a warehouse which loses half its inventory to the locals overnight. With 22,000 line items of inventory in stock, it can be tricky trying to work out which widget has been nicked before someone in maintenance comes looking for it! 250kg blocks of steel are regularly pilfered for scrap sales using shopping trolleys from the local grocery store (Pick'N'Pay). Latest thinking is that they will transfer all the stuff the smelter no longer needs to the warehouse in question, thereby saving on expensive disposal!!
Other tricky issues include how to lay copper cables so that they remain in situ long enough to fulfil their function. Although a little heavy handed, the best option to date is to concrete them into the ground so they don't go AWOL.
Same same, only different
There is a certain uniformity that has pervaded all BHP sites - if not for the South Africa sign out the front you could swear you were driving into some iron ore facility in Port Hedland. High vis clothing and hard hats abound, and woe betide anyone who fails to halt at a stop sign on site, as there goes your job.
For all that, Simon is getting a real buzz out of a totally different role that is challenging and interesting. It sounds like he's got a great bunch of people to work with, and so long as I remember to obey the traffic signals while dropping him off in the morning, he should be there for a while longer.
