The market has a lot to answer for, and so do investors in search of a quick buck. Where gold mining is concerned, it is a well-known fact that as the price on the international metal exchanges fluctuates the viability of higher cost mines comes into question. There are properties all over the world that have been put into mothballs either because all the high grade material has been taken or because they can’t any longer sustain a decent margin.

A member of the Bravo Group, South Africa’s largest and most diverse furniture manufacturer, Alpine Lounge has left behind the world of high volume mass-produced furniture. It is a premium marque and its Ashanti brand can only be described as aspirational. Founded in 1969 it has built its reputation on state-of-the-art technology, quality products, on-time delivery and caring and efficient after-sales service.

Moving one’s home can be, I’m sure many will agree, a challenging, stressful experience at the best of times. The same holds true for relocating a business, something the Business Excellence team have experienced first-hand recently. As anyone in the publishing business will attest to, there is a lot more to a company like ours than simply a few individuals who produce the features you see before you.

In a very short space of time – less than a decade really – technology has changed the way people live their lives. It has also changed the way they work. It was in 2008 that Kevin Roberts, the worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, told me how his iPhone freed him from the constraints of geography, enabling him to run the business as effectively from his home in New Zealand as from his office in New York or Lancashire, where he happened to be at the time.

Located in Century City, a business development within the suburbs of Cape Town, the office will act as a regional hub for the company’s activities in Sub-Saharan Africa, which covers various territories including Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Cameroon, and Tanzania. The opening comes on the eve of the 20th Africa Oil Week, starting on the 25 November.

“We are delighted to be celebrating twenty years of contribution to Africa’s economy and the success of an industry,” said Jonathan Moore, Managing Director of Mining Indaba LLC. “We have the global mining community, investors and our partners in Africa to thank for this success.”

For the cool price of $83 million, well-known New York diamond cutter Isaac Wolf purchased the diamond known as the Pink Star.

Measuring 2.69 centimetres by 2.06 centimetres and set on a ring, the diamond, now renamed the Pink Dream by its new owner, was mined by De Beers in 1999, in an unspecified African country. The winning bid, which includes the cost of auctioneer Sotheby’s commission, far surpasses the $46.2m paid for the Graff Pink diamond three years ago, which was half the size of the Pink Star.

“While the theme of the conference remains mostly the same, the finale of a year’s worth of hard work, what we do hope to do is mature the event and the presentations that take place each year,” states Lean Program Director, Glenn Uminger. The conference he is referring to is the University of Kentucky’s Lean Systems Program, 2013 Users Conference, held on 10-11 September, 2013.