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Tempers flare over Marikana
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Tue, 20 Dec 2005

[miningmx.com] -- A messy legal battle is about to be fought between Aquarius Platinum and its main contractor Moolman Mining because of an ongoing dispute at the Marikana open pit platinum mine.

JSE- and Sydney-listed Aquarius said on Tuesday it would claim damages of R1bn against Moolman Mining after terminating their contract at Marikana.

Aquarius said there had been “actionable misrepresentation” by Moolman Mining, which is the opencast mine specialist arm of Grinaker LTA, which in turned is owned by JSE-listed Aveng.

“This misrepresentation induced AQPSA (Aquarius Platinum South Africa) to conclude the mining contract,” Aquarius said in a statement on the JSE news service (SENS).

“AQPSA will now claim damages against Moolman, estimated to be in excess of R1bn.”

Aquarius chairman Stuart Murray was not immediately available for comment nor were his executives.
AQPSA will now claim damages against Moolman, estimated to be in excess of R1bn
Aveng CEO Carl Grim called the statement “spurious” and a “delaying tactic” by Aquarius, which owes Moolman more than R200m related to deductions made from monies owed to the country’s largest contract miner.

“It’s stalling tactics entirely on their part. They should have sent us a cheque of R200m today. They haven’t. They’ve gone the “misrepresentation of material facts” route to drag it through the courts for another year or two,” he told Miningmx.

“We have very substantial other claims against them in addition to that R200m. Now, after this action there are further claims,” he added, but declined to give an exact amount.

“We will follow the legal route and get our money from them.”

The R1bn claim would roughly equal what Moolman had been paid at Marikana over the past four years.

“It’s spurious in the extreme,” he said.

Aquarius said it was talking to another contractor to start work at the mine.

“The Board of AQPSA believes the operational and financial impact of this action will be of a short-term nature and has taken steps to manage and accordingly mitigate it,” it said.

There is a dispute over the payment formula between the two parties that is audited each month to ensure neither party is seriously out of pocket. Grim said Aquarius had deducted money for no reason over the past two years.

“I’ve had many one-on-one meetings with Stuart Murray, our people at different levels have met, but there’s been no resolution,” he said.
It’s gone on for so long because they don’t have a viable mine
Asked why the dispute had gone so badly wrong and why it had dragged on for so long, Grim attacked the Aquarius mining plan.

“It’s gone on for so long because they don’t have a viable mine,” he said. “We are responsible for execution and they are responsible for planning. The planning has been appallingly bad… and as a result we’ve done the best we can, but we could have done very much better.”

Marikana reported an on-mine loss of $18.6m in the year to end-June 2005, but Aquarius said it expects significantly improved results in the 2006 financial year because of its pool and share agreement with Anglo Platinum.