Abigail's story

There’s a certain breed of people who do well at Xstrata; they thrive on being given responsibility and accountability right away. I thought if I work at Xstrata and crack it, I can work anywhere.

Taking the heat

I'm a Raw Materials Superintendent at the Lydenburg ferrochrome plant. I joined Xstrata in 2006 as a young Production Engineer, from another company’s ferrochrome plant. Within a few weeks I was put on standby for the first time. I was on call over the weekend in case anything went wrong at the plant. That weekend we had major breakdowns as the pellets from the feeding plant, which feeds the furnace, were too hot and caused blockages.

As I was still familiarising myself with the plant, I called my Operations Manager for advice. He arrived and took me through the process for resolving the problem from beginning to end. I thought he would stay and help, but he told me he trusted me. So I did what he said and we successfully stabilised the plant.

Encouraging words

Early next morning he returned, and said: ‘Well done. You’ve been baptized in fire and you’ll have learned more than if I had done it for you. If you have survived this, you can survive anything.’ Those words really encouraged me and I think it’s part of the reason I’m still here now.

“To be given the freedom and to be trusted… that to me is priceless.”

Every time I face a difficult situation, I remember those words and start solving a problem one step at a time until the goal is reached. I am grateful for being given an opportunity to learn and for being given a platform to make mistakes and learn from them. From just that experience, I learnt that Xstrata is different. I’m responsible for feeding the plant and I’m running the whole show and I enjoy that. To be given the freedom and to be trusted to do what I’m supposed to do, that to me is priceless.