Adani Mining is changing its name to ‘Bravus’. The re-branding has been announced on YouTube by Adani and widely reported. It comes in the wake of other attempts at re-branding, with Adani expunging its own name from its north Queensland rail and port operations. AdaniWatch has previously described Adani as ‘the company that dare not speak its name’.

The chief executive officer of Adani Mining, David Boshoff, said that Bravus was Latin for brave and courageous, ‘a description that suited the company’.

However, the company was so ‘brave’ about changing its toxic brand that it made the announcement when everyone was looking the other way, fully engrossed in the USA presidential election.

The Australian Financial Review said that other definitions of Bravus on the internet described it as meaning ‘cut-throat or villain – not great for a company that has been targeted by environmentalists for its behaviour both in Australia and India'.

The Australian (paywalled) said ‘the most controversial name in Australian mining is no more after budding coal producer Adani rebranded to call itself Latin for brave. By dumping the family name of its Indian owner, Bravus Mining & Resources is trying to reset after a decade of pitched environmental and political battles over the Carmichael mine in central west Queensland.’

The Guardian interviewed an expert in Latin who said that Adani had gotten lost in translation. Bravus apparently means 'crooked', 'cut-throat' or 'mercenary'. A Freudian slip?

Leading environmentalist, Bob Brown, said that the name change won’t change Adani’s ‘infamy’.

‘The Adani corporation’s name change in Australia from ‘Adani’ to ‘Bravus’ won’t improve its global reputation for being an environmental monster in this age of climate emergency and extinction crisis,’ Bob Brown said.

‘A new anti-Adani slogan is ‘SAVE US FROM BRAVUS,’ he said.

‘This must be humiliating for Gautam Adani, the multi-billionaire owner of the mine works in Central Queensland. He is admitting that his name is poison for the public and potential investors alike.’

‘Yet he doesn’t get it. It is a game change, not a name change, that is required – and that means stopping his mine and getting out of dirty, polluting coal altogether. That would take an integrity which Adani by any name, from Goa to the Galilee Basin, lacks. The public will think even less of Adani for this failed bit of window dressing en route to his Queensland mine becoming a stranded asset,’ Brown said.

Frontline Action of Coal staged a hilarious protest, with participants polishing a giant turd, reported by News Ltd (paywalled).

The Brisbane Times interviewed Mackay Conservation Group co-ordinator, Peter McCallum, who said people would not be fooled by Adani’s attempt to 'hide behind a new name'.