​IchorCoal to sponsor team led by Skipper Darren Ladd

South African mining company IchorCoal is the latest Team Sponsor to come aboard the Clipper 2015-16 Race and their team will be led by Somerset Skipper Darren Ladd.

It is the first time that IchorCoal has had an entry in the race and their CEO NonKululeko Nyembezi-Heita explained the reasons behind the partnership:“We have assembled an excellent team of people from diverse backgrounds that make up our group of experienced coal miners, process specialists and administrators that are being guided by an industry-respected leadership.

“It is the same concept of team work, dedication and alignment to a strategic goal by ordinary people that has been the key driver in IchorCoal’s commitment to support this year’s Clipper Race. The diverse team of people that make up our crew has the same excitement and devotion that I see in our team at IchorCoal, and this can only ensure a successful race for everybody involved.”

IchorCoal is a thermal coal explorer, developer and miner that operates in South Africa. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands and its shares are traded on the German stock exchanges.

Among the diverse, international crew on board IchorCoal will be eight young South Africans from challenging backgrounds who won bursaries to join the Clipper Race crew through the Sapinda Rainbow Foundation. The youths will form a relay with each team member completing one race leg, developing skills that will help them throughout their future – personally and professionally.

Skipper Darren Ladd said: “I am really pleased to have IchorCoal as our Team Sponsor. It is particularly nice for the crew because some of them are from the Sapinda Rainbow Foundation and it ties everything in nicely and gives us an identity.

“I have many family and friends in South Africa so they will be happy to see this too. In less than four months we will be sailing into Cape Town and that is going to be even more special now that we are on a South African sponsored boat.”

IchorCoal joins a diverse range of organisations and destinations partnering with the Clipper Race in our ground-breaking tenth edition.

Clipper Ventures CEO William Ward stated: “We are excited to welcome IchorCoal on board. It clearly recognises the power of the Clipper Race in building visibility in key markets. We are confident IchorCoal will discover this is a powerful platform for developing its domestic and international networks.”

IchorCoal aims to become the leading dedicated producer of thermal coal in sub-Saharan Africa. Its annual coal production is currently more than 5-million tonnes and it plans to increase this to over 15-million tonnes a year by 2017. The thermal coal product it mines is used exclusively in the burgeoning South African power generation industry.