Roy Pitchford, CEO of Central African Gold
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Roy Pitchford and team hunts gold in east SA
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Fri, 08 Jun 2007

[miningmx.com] -- ROY Pitchford, who has been involved in two platinum companies bought out by Impala Platinum, has turned his and his team’s focus to gold and has helped set up a company called Sabie Gold, which will explore a poly metallic deposit in eastern South Africa.

The deposit near Malelane, north of Swaziland, was brought to the attention of the three men, who were behind the formation of Zimplats and African Platinum and are now within the Impala Platinum stable, when African Platinum was acquired by the world’s second largest platinum producer earlier this year.

Pitchford, who is chairman of Sabie Gold, is joined by long-time associate Dave Reeves, who is CEO at the private company, and Russell Laming, an executive director.
potential to be a very large, low-grade deposit
Asked if he and his team had this time chosen a mineral unlikely to attract much attention from Impala for a third time, Pitchford said: "You're not the first to tease me on that one."

The deposit was drilled by Shell and South African steel group Iscor (now Mittal Steel SA) in the 1980s and showed gold, zinc and nickel mineralisation.

“With the assays we’ve got, the zinc and nickel would probably double the value of the deposit as an in situ grade. They are definitely important credits,” Reeves told Miningmx.

Sabie, has just completed raising R30m from predominantly offshore private investors towards a two-rig drilling programme over the next four to six months to determine what exactly is in the deposit and whether it will sustain an economic mining operation, Reeves said, declining to release grade data.

The deposit at the upper end of the Barberton greenstone range could be a large, shallow, low-grade banded chert and carbonaceous shale deposit, lending itself to a bulk surface operation.

“It has the potential to be a very large, low-grade deposit like they mine in other places in the world, but South Africa, as far as I’m aware, has not seen something like it before,” Reeves said. South Africa has high-grade, narrow vein style of mining.

“It will be quite nice for South Africa to see other types of deposits and mining styles, something a little out of the ordinary for here,” he said.

The deposit footprint is about three kilometres long by a couple of hundred metres wide and has been tracked to a depth of 400 metres.

Pitchford was the chief executive of Delta Gold in Zimbabwe during his mining career and Reeves was on the team that developed Eureka Gold Mine and has managed a gold mine.

Sabie Gold holds 100% of a local subsidiary, which owns 74% of the deposit and an empowerment group the remaining 26%. Sabie Gold is owned by Pitchford, Reeves, Lamming, the original vendors and those who provided seed capital towards the exploration programme.

“Once we’ve done the drilling we’ll look at the results and decide on the best way forward and what the best way to raise capital,” Reeves said.

There is no immediate rush towards a listing because a private company can bring it up the value chain, creating more interest in the project, at the same time avoiding the regulatory costs a listing would entail.

“It’s tougher for an early stage exploration company to raise money than for a project, which is nearer development,” he said.

Pitchford told Miningmx his preference would be to have a Johannesburg listing, but it was far too early to make a decision.