AECI to expand African, Asian and South American 'footprint'

"Countries such as Morocco and Mozambique hold significant growth opportunities for AEL and the company is well positioned for this," Edwards said, "as Africa will be the future hub in terms of resource growth." He spoke at AECI's financial year-end results presentation in Johannesburg.

"Our speciality chemicals cluster is based in South Africa and we are looking to expand into Central Africa in line with AEL's footprint, from there moving to West and East Africa," Edwards pointed out, adding that the group would also actively pursue opportunities for the expansion of its specialty chemicals cluster into other geographies this year. Edwards said that AECI delivered pleasing results in a trading environment challenged by currency and commodity volatility, labour strikes and heavy rainfall that impacted on opencast mining operations in some areas.

Edwards said growth momentum in the company's underlying businesses was expected to continue into 2012. "We foresee steady volume growth, depending on European and US demand growth that is seemingly starting to come through," he said, noting that "China's so-called 'soft landing' from its property bubble, which is resulting in the loosening up of its bank requirements, add to some optimism," Engineering News reports.

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