DALLAS and JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, August 7 /PRNewswire/ --

- Mining division launches its full e-Procurement functionality with African suppliers

Anglo Base Metals launched its full e-Procurement functionality at a formal event on 1 August 2008, in partnership with Quadrem Africa, a subsidiary of Quadrem International Ltd, a supply chain solutions company with one of the world's largest electronically connected supplier networks for private and public sectors.

This will see its African operations -- Black Mountain mine in the Northern Cape and Skorpion Zinc mine and refinery in southern Namibia -- transacting with more than 1500 African based suppliers using the full suite of 13 electronic procure-to-pay documents on the Quadrem platform, from Requests for Quotations to Remittance Advice documents.

Anglo Base Metals expects to process over 100,000 transactions with a value in excess of R1.5 billion through Quadrem.

"Quadrem has played a key role in enabling our supplier community to align with our e-Business Strategy. This is essential to optimizing the way in which we do business with our suppliers." said Hennie Smit, Head of Supply Chain for Anglo Base Metals (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

"Quadrem's unique offering provides robust and world-class service and technology solutions coupled with intensive support to our suppliers," explained Smit.

This is particularly relevant in that the Anglo Base Metals' operations are located in remote areas in the Northern Cape and Namibia with a diverse supply base.

Lynette Rehse, national contracts manager for Bearing Man, notes, "Bearing Man has been involved with Quadrem since 2002 and welcomes the opportunity to be involved with Anglo in this process. In our experience this process goes a long way in eliminating potential miscommunications and reinforces Anglo and Bearing Man's vision of being faster, better and more efficient in service and delivery."

Commenting on the launch, Quadrem Africa's regional vice president, Deon Mocke, added: "This represents a significant step for Quadrem Africa and its relationship with the Anglo American group. Anglo Base Metals adds critical mass to our buying community and we look forward to connecting them with suppliers."

Quadrem's e-Procurement solutions meet the needs of both the Anglo Base Metals' operations and their suppliers. Some suppliers have highly sophisticated IT systems, while others have limited IT infrastructure. Quadrem's e-Procurement solutions cater for both.

Quadrem enables buying organisations to optimise their electronic transactional relationships with their supply base, driving cost efficiencies throughout the supply chain by eliminating errors typically related to paper- based transactions.

Quadrem Statistics:

-- Quadrem Africa is the largest black owned e-Procurement solutions provider of trade leads and the largest online marketplace in Africa.

-- Quadrem Africa manages a base of over 20,000 registered, verified suppliers, of which 75% verified as HDSA Owned companies and 91% are classified as small, medium, micro-size enterprises (SMME).

-- Quadrem International Ltd connects in excess of 1000 buyer locations globally with more than 50,000 suppliers with over 5 million transactions and more than US$18 billion in annual trade.

Additional information

About Anglo Base Metals

Anglo Base Metals, a member of the Anglo American group (http://www.angloamerican.co.uk), has interests in 14 operations in six countries which produce copper, nickel, zinc, niobium, titanium dioxide and zircon, together with associated by-products including lead, molybdenum and silver.

About Quadrem

Quadrem (http://www.quadrem.com) delivers "on demand" solutions that enable procurement executives and their suppliers around the world to automate processes, improve performance and reduce supply chain costs. Quadrem has built one of the world's largest electronically connected supplier networks, so its customers can connect once to the community rather than invest in multiple one-to-one connections. Core competencies include e-sourcing, e-procurement, e-invoicing, contract management, spend management, supplier relationship management, electronic catalogues and master data management.

Established in 2000, Quadrem has locations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Mexico, The Netherlands, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Web site: http://www.quadrem.com http://www.angloamerican.co.uk

Katherine Kirkpatrick of Quadrem, +1-214-872-1328, Mobile, +1-214-929-0205, kkirkpatrick@quadrem.com; or Samantha Choles, +27-11-894-1901, Mobile, +27-82-452-2566, sam@frogcomm.co.za, for Quadrem and Anglo Base Metals; NOTE TO EDITORS: Photographs available on request