[miningmx.com] – ANGLO American Platinum (Amplats) said it was finalising preparations for the sale of its Union mine and would evaluation offers for the asset this month.
In a presentation on the company’s website, delivered to analysts on October 3, Amplats CEO, Chris Griffith, said the firm had also received expressions of interest for its Rustenburg operations.
“We have received expressions of interest for both Union and Rustenburg,” he said in the presentation. “We are in the process of finalising preparations for the sale of Union and will be evaluating the interest in October,” he said.
Sibanye Gold, considered among the most enthusiastic of bidders for platinum assets earlier this year, said at the Denver Gold Forum in September that while there were still “a few” potential acquisitions, many of the platinum deals first explored had been abandoned.
Amplats said in its presentation that it was also preparing, as part of a dual strategy, the separate listing of its Rustenburg units.
Amplats had reconfigured its Rustenburg mines to three from five cutting between 250,000 oz to 350,000 oz/year of platinum production. It had also consolidated Union North and South operations as part of a strategy to cut costs R3.8bn by 2016.
Amplats added it had achieved an average 97% of production capacity August and September following the five-and-a-half months strike waged by AMCU, and which came to a close on June 23.
Pieter Louw, executive head of mining at Amplats, said in a presentation that the company had achieved “… better than planned ramp-up as a result of effective labour re-integration and production planning”.
However, production fell to 94% of capacity in September from 97% in the previous month owing to two safety incidents that led to stoppages as required by South Africa’s Department of Mineral Resources.
Shares in Amplats were just over one percent higher today after a volatile couple of day’s trade in the platinum price. Bids for the metal fell to below $1,190/oz on October 3 – their lowest in five years – before increasing today to $1,234/oz.
Bloomberg News quoted Walter de Wet, head of commodities research at Standard Bank Group, as saying that it was “very difficult” to say whether the price of platinum had bottomed out.
Amplats said in its presentation that in the medium-term repeated platinum supply deficits would lead to price recovery.
“South African supply expected to remain weak during the post-strike ramp-up and from recent reduced capital spend,” it said. “Southern African producers [are] only likely to deliver incremental supply from 2018,” it said.
