Loucas Pouroulis, mining entrepreneur
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Pouroulis goes for platinum again
Brendan Ryan
Posted: Fri, 21 Nov 2008

[miningmx.com] -- MINING entrepreneur Loucas Pouroulis is looking to replicate the success of Eland Platinum with another platinum venture called Kameni which will develop new mines in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Kameni will be funded initially through seed capital of R500m intended to take the two projects through to the bankable feasibility stage over the next 12 to 18 months.

Plans are then to raise another R2bn ahead of a listing on the JSE which will raise around R5bn to complete the construction of the two mines.

Pouroulis is non-executive chairman of Kameni. The CEO is Stephen Gorven – former CEO of Rothschild SA – who left the investment bank in September to join Kameni.

Gorven’s former colleague at Rothschild, Michael Jones, has also joined Kameni as chief financial officer.

Gorven pointed out the rest of the management team is the same one that successfully built the Eland Platinum mine which was sold in August last year to Xstrata for R7.25bn.

Gorven commented, “Former Eland MD David Salter is a non-executive director. Clem Sweet is the COO and it’s the same team of geologists, metallurgists and mining engineers.”

Kameni’s projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe contain a total resource of some 90m oz of platinum group metals (pgm) and plans are to build mines each capable of producing 400,000oz of pgm annually.

The SA project, named Kalkfontein, covers 6,025ha on the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld Complex sitting west of the Two Rivers mine owned by ARM and Impala Platinum (Implats) and the Mototolo JV owned by Anglo Platinum and Xstrata.

The ground is down dip of these mines meaning the reefs should be deeper but Gorven said geological faulting had pushed up a ‘fault block’ available for initial mining at depths from 20m to 500m.

The block is estimated to contain 11.8m oz of pgm on the UG2 reef and 4.5m oz on the Merensky Reef giving a 15 to 29 year life of mine (LOM).

The total resource at Kalkfontein is estimated at more than 50m oz of pgm with the deeper resources to be mined later.

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Kalkfontein has been created through a merger of ground held by Kameni and Implats and Implats has a 20% stake in the project along with board representation and “flip up” rights to convert its stake in Kalkfontein into shares in Kameni after listing.

Kameni has also signed commercial terms for an off-take agreement to have the pgm concentrate produced at Kalkfontein treated by Implats. Gorven said Implats will participate in the project team and Kameni will have access to Implats’ technical and operational skills.

In Zimbabwe, Kameni has so far put together a resource of 10m oz of pgm for its Bougai project but has put in offers on surrounding properties which will increase this to 30m oz.

The ground secured so far used to belong to Anglo Platinum’s Unki project but was surrendered in terms of Zimbabwe’s indigenisation policy.

AIM-listed Central African Mining and Exploration (Camec) controversially secured another chunk of former Unki ground early this year and is developing a mine close to the Bougai project.

It was revealed in June that Camec had lent US$100m to the Zimbabwean government as part of the deal through which it acquired the Unki ground.

Gorven commented, “we went in the front door working through the local mining commissioner to peg ground that became available.

“We’ve had a legal due diligence done on the validity of the claims and our acquisition at Bougai is squeaky clean. It has to be because we will be raising funds on the basis of holding that ground.”

The ground also contains extensive chrome resources and plans are to develop two mines – one producing 400,000oz of pgm annually and a second producing 1.2mt of chrome annually.

Asked about the feasibility of raising R7bn to R8bn given present market conditions Gorven commented, “the initial seed capital is what it’s all about. After that the quality of the assets we own should speak for themselves.

“We will not be relying on the general market for that money. We will be approaching people who have backed Loucas before and have had a good experience and will be prepared to follow him again.”