President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf launches ArcelorMittal brand in Liberia

On July 25 2007, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female President, formally launched the ArcelorMittal brand at a well attended ceremony in the company’s concession area near the Port City of Buchanan. This brand launch and several other events were held in conjunction with the celebration of Liberia’s 160 years of independence on July 26.

Joseph Mathews, CEO of ArcelorMittal’s mining project in Liberia, said that ArcelorMittal would live its brand promise of helping to ‘transform tomorrow’ through Sustainability, Quality and Leadership, adding that Liberia was where transforming tomorrow would have its greatest impact.

In her speech, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf demonstrated her appreciation to CEO Lakshmi Mittal and then launched the new ArcelorMittal identity stating that the brand represented something that was very consistent with Liberia’s independent symbol of ‘reclaiming the future’ while ArcelorMittal’s was ‘transforming tomorrow’.

New hope has again been breathed in to the area since Liberia sealed a 25-year concession and billion-dollar project with ArcelorMittal in May, paving the way for the start of the iron ore mining venture. With a record 85% unemployment rate in this small, resource-rich country of 3.3 million people, ArcelorMittal is expected to create at least 3,000 new full-time jobs and generate up to 20,000 downstream jobs.

Picture: President Sirleaf and CEO of ArcelorMittal’s mining project in Liberia, Joseph Matthews