Diversification strategy embarked upon by Afrimat since the 2008 global financial crisis is transforming and propelling the JSE-listed open-pit mining company into a mid-tier mining house. The acquisitions that have underpinned Afrimat’s diversification strategy have been facilitated by the group’s consistent profit performance and resulted in the group having three business segments – construction materials, industrial minerals and bulk commodities. The group has achieved a compound average growth rate in profit after tax of 22% between February 2009 and February 2021 and the diversification has made the group more resilient. The group’s iron ore business carried the group during the first half of the financial year when construction materials and industrial minerals were not producing any revenue during the harder Covid-19 lockdowns.
Afrimat is today in the best and most healthy financial position it has ever been in, has consistently been delivering value for more than a decade and the recovery by the group’s businesses after the hard Covid-19 lockdown showed the resilience of the group’s entrepreneurial culture. if Afrimat had only remained exposed to construction materials, its headline earnings per share in the same period would have been much lower and negative compared to headline earnings per share of 441.7 cents in the year to end-February 2021. The gap between the profit history of Afrimat over the past 10 years with and without acquisitions has never been as wide as it is right now because of the good performance of our other businesses.