An integrated approach

I’m the Manager of Business Administration at the Nordenham plant in Germany, which employs about 325 employees. Here we work closely with our colleagues across Xstrata Zinc to maximise value through the chain.

Pulling together

We are a zinc electrolytic plant, and receive zinc concentrate from Xstrata mines in Canada and Australia from which we produce 150,000 tonnes of zinc metal every year. I’ve been with Xstrata for two years now, and Xstrata Zinc is much more integrated than where I worked before. Here we are much more involved in the value chain. The zinc electrolysis is a part of the value chain and we are dependent on the quality and delivery of the concentrate from the mines. We work closely with our colleagues across Xstrata Zinc to maximise value through the chain.

“We work closely with our colleagues across Xstrata Zinc to maximise value through the chain.”

Management and employees are pulling in the same direction. The zinc industry can be difficult and we compete with global competitors, with zinc from Brazil, India, the Netherlands and Belgium and, in the future, China. It’s really important that everybody in the plant has the same understanding of what needs to be done. It’s quite an old plant - over 100 years - but if we have a problem our people are willing to solve it, even on Christmas or New Year’s Day.

Committed to the community

Nordenham is a small city of about 27,000 inhabitants. As one of the major taxpayers, we work closely with the city authorities and frequently meet to discuss issues and developments for the local economy and community.

We hold round tables with other industrial companies where we discuss how to attract employees to Nordenham. It’s quite difficult to get well-trained engineers here. The city authorities are very interested in helping us, for example through housing and kindergartens, so we get the employees we need and the community grows in the future.