BNC#9 | Fired for pitching an 'unlistable' idea, Afrimat CEO v Heerden built a R10bn company anyway

Fired from a small quarrying company in 2005 for pitching an idea a lawyer called "unlistable," Andries van Heerden went and built it anyway. Twenty years on, that idea is Afrimat: a R10 billion JSE-listed miner spanning iron ore, manganese, anthracite, rare earths and now cement, after last year's Lafarge acquisition. At BNC#9, the man rated by his peers as South Africa's best miner lays out the deals, the near-misses, and the culture overhaul it took to get there, then turns to what's actually hurting Afrimat right now. It isn't the cement plant everyone warned him about. It's the slow unravelling of South African industry itself.