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Fluorspar tonnages rising - Izak Marais, CEO of Sallies
In an interview on ClassicFM @ 18:30 on 20 September 2006
[miningmx.com] -- A cash shortage in fluorspar producer Sallies has meant the company has not yet fully benefited from the introduction of its Buffelshoek mine, but the company is turning itself around from a R40m attributable loss in the 2006 financial year, CEO Izak Marais said.
Sallies was unable to match its 2005 production performance of 150,000 tonnes of fluorspar. It produced 85,000 tonnes for a number of reasons, one of the key being the government only granting Sallies a new order mining right over its Buffelshoek mine in April.
Buffelshoek plays an important role in providing material that is blended with product from Witkop mine.
"Buffelshoek is now part of our ore body and forms part of our daily mining cycle. Unfortunately the recovery was not as fast as we would have hoped," Marais told the Classic Business Day week-nightly radio show.
"As a result of the
loss of revenue and other financial constraints we had to focus on keeping the business in business and we could not focus as much on getting the right blends of ore into the plant. We're unable at this stage to get the full effect of Buffelshoek translated into feed grade," he said.
July production figures were in line with the monthly average for the past year, but in August there was an improvement from 6,000 tonnes to 8,000 tonnes and close to 10,000 in September.
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