Medium-sized President Steyn Gold Mines (PSGM) is set fair for its
listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in the next few
weeks, is already looking for an alliance with a bigger player in
the field, and is considering expansion locally and abroad, Mining
Weekly can today report.
“We have progressed a long way with regard to the listing and
we are just awaiting the approval of our permanent mining licence
and the transfer of the mineral rights, and then we’ll
proceed – all the necessary documents are already at the
JSE,” says PSGM CEO Mac van der Merwe.
Transfer of the minerajapan copper mining crusher equipmentl rights can take place only after the
granting of the permament mining licence, and that, in turn,
depends upon the acceptance of the company’s environmental
management plan (EMP) by the Department of Minerals and Energy
(DME).
“We’ve had great support from the DME over our EMP,
limestone crushing plant material splits
which has been developed over the past two years,” he
reports.
In parallel, the company is talking to a large gold-mining company
about an alliance.
“We hope to come to an agreement within a month – the
company concerned has a similar background to PSGM – andmanufacturing processes of zinc sulphate
first prize for us would be a formal alliance, in which it takes an
equity share in our company, but we might start with an informal
alliance and proceed form there, starting small and building it
up,” he reveals.
“The negotiations are open-ended,” he elucidates.
With iron ore crushing magnet equipmentsuch an alliance, PSGM would be able to benefit from its
ally’s benchmarking and experience, and an arrangement like
this could contribute to both the internal and external growth of
the company.
In addition to listing on the JSE, the company has ambitions of
listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
copper ore jaw crusher“Once we finalise our listing here, the plan is to pick up
our negotiations with the people we have been talking to in Canada
over the past year,” clarifies Van der Merwe.
In addition, the company is looking at opportunities in Australia
– not necessarily a listing, but a joint venture or an
acquisition.
“We are interested in the acquisition of greenfields and
existing opportunities – we’d prefer greenfield
acquisitions to be in South Africa and/or Africa, while we’re
looking at North America and Australia for existing
operations,” he explains.
“At the moment, we’ve identified opportunities in North
America and Australia, but the negotiations are in the very early
stages – we’ve got to get our listing first, and be
comfortable with the exploitation of the existing opportunities
within PSGM,” he cautions.
With regard to greenfields opportunities in Africa, and especially
South Africa, the company’s desire is for deposits that can
be exploited through opencast operations.
“There are a number of opencast gold opportunities in South
Africa, and we are looking at one in the Free State, a greenstone
deposit, which, if it comes off, could be operational in five
years,” he concludes.