[miningmx.com] – MWANA Africa, a £32.5m nickel and gold miner, is considering restarting mining at Klipspringer in an effort to continue its turnaround in fortunes.
Mwana bought Klipspringer from SouthernEra Resources in 2007, but flash floods wiped out the mine’s operation. some two years after it began operating. The mine is near the fabulous, but mined-out, Marsfontein mine that repaid its capital in months.
The addition of diamond mining signals a swing in fortunes for Mwana which also restarted nickel mining at its subsidiary Bindura Nickel Company (BNC), owner of the Trojan and Shangani nickel mines in Zimbabwe.
BNC nickel sales, marketed to Glencore, totalled 7,129 tonnes for the year which led to a $28m reversal of a previous year’s impairment. Added to some 58,704 ounces of gold production from Freda-Rebecca, net profit came in at $50.6m equating to a near $100m reversal on last year’s loss including the impairment.
Mwana Africa CEO, Kalaa Mpinga, said the company was seeking finance to re-open platinum group metal (including nickel) smelting operations in Zimbabwe with the first nickel alloy set to be sold in the first quarter of calendar 2015. There was also a study to consider treating surface material at Freda-Rebecca.
“In South Africa, we are currently evaluating the viability of resuming underground mining at the Klipspringer diamond mine as well as of the possibility of recovering small diamonds from the mine’s coarse-tailings residues,” said Mpinga.
“During the past financial year recovery of micro diamonds from residue slimes contributed to covering the property’s care-and-maintenance costs,” he said. The mine is situated about 250km north of Johannesburg.
Mpinga said the company intended to reward shareholders for “their unstinting support” and to be be self-financing on future projects which includes a copper joint venture with China’s Zhejiang Hailiang Company in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“The current financial year is confidently expected to result in Mwana’s further financial strengthening and in that of our ability to advance the development of new projects,” said Mpinga.
“And, as the share price has advanced since the start of 2014, I am confident that further improvements will flow from our proving our ability to develop and operate our assets profitably,’ he said.
“We note the considerable progress and improvements although we wait to see how financing could evolve for restarting the Bindura Nickel smelter and how the company copes with the continued and even increasing difficulties of operating in Zimbabwe,” said Investec Securities in a morning note.
Shares in Mwana Africa were 14% higher in London on the back of the company’s turnaround, and were last trading at 2,65 pence/share.
