Anitua Group is one of Papua New Guinea’s most prominent landowner companies, providing goods and services to the Lihir gold mine and other parts of PNG. Chief Executive Lawrence Rausim speaks with Business Advantage PNG about the relationship with new mine owner Newmont Corporation and shares how his group is setting its community up for the future.

A pair of mechanic workers for Anitua Mining Services. Credit: Anitua

Anitua Group was established in 1989 for landowners from Lihir Island to participate and benefit in the Lihir gold project. Today, Anitua continues to provide goods and services to the mine, including through its flagship NCS PNG (formerly Niolam Catering Services). It also has subsidiaries and joint ventures with other landowner groups operating throughout PNG.  

Our model is not to go and take any business from any other landowner groups, but to partner with them and pass on our expertise and experience.

In this interview with Business Advantage PNG, Anitua Chief Executive Lawrence Rausim speaks about the impact of Newmont Corporation’s 2023 acquisition of the Lihir gold mine, and shares the groups plans to set its community up for life after mine closure. 

Business Advantage PNG (BAPNG): How has the relationship been with Newmont since they acquired the mine?

Lawrence Rausim (LR): Newmont has come in with a totally different approach to what we saw with Newcrest. We’ve engaged them in conversation around all the contracts and partnerships we have with the mine operation and if they need any improvements to any of the services we provide. We know it’s early days for them, and they have been busy with integrating the mine into their business, so we’ve just stepped back and are waiting on them. 

At the moment, our strategy is to consolidate and bring the business back to the scope that it used to be in providing services to the Lihir mine. That is our bread and butter as a business. We’ve got to get back to focusing on building our business around the mine before going out into other parts of PNG again.  

BAPNG: Could you provide an insight into your joint ventures with other landowner groups?

LR: We know other landowner groups are involved in resources projects in PNG. As a landowner business, we understand that you want to be able to benefit from what is happening on your land. 

Our model is not to go and take any business from any other landowner groups, but to partner with them and pass on our expertise and experience from what we’ve done with providing services to Lihir. Then, hopefully when they are up and running, there is nothing stopping them from taking over those operations. 

BAPNG: What other sectors are you focusing on outside of the mine?

LR: We’ve been looking at building a template for small-scale agricultural projects on Lihir island, because, from our experience, our people are too dependent on what is happening with the mining operations.   

We need to step back and start looking at where we can provide opportunities for our people. If we can build that around agriculture, then they can go back and utilise their own land to produce something that they can then supply to others.  

Our emphasis is ‘let’s produce our own if we can’, to produce the inputs that NCS requires. We can then encourage our people to move away from relying on whatever that they can get from the mine and into working on the land and providing to NCS.  

The truth is the mine won’t be there forever. There will come a time that the mining operation comes to an end.  

We need to start looking at what are the opportunities we can build now so we can get our people to be involved and start to support their own livelihood instead.  

We see this as something that resonates with the government’s Vision 2050 on economic empowerment. If we can start to get some traction there, hopefully we can attract a partnership with government entities to come on board and support us. 

BAPNG: What kind of impact do you see Anitua having in the community long-term?

LR: We are all too aware that we’re sending our kids to universities, only for them to graduate and find out there are no jobs for them. I look at it in the sense where the system is pushing kids out and we don’t seem to be finding way for them to be productive within our community.  

As a business, we don’t only look at that as a responsibility of the government.   

Looking at this agriculture business that we are trying to develop on the island, we are providing that opportunity.  

We see ourselves as a business that belongs to the people of PNG and needs to contribute towards giving these kids an opportunity to be able to support themselves, to do something good and contribute something meaningful to the community.