[miningmx.com] — FOLLOWING a year of frenetic corporate activity at
Gold One International, CEO Neal Froneman has revealed his next play: a possible
surface-operations joint venture with Gold Fields in the West Rand.
The assets at the core of such a venture would be the mining dumps – some of
which are decades old – at Gold Fields’ Kloof, Driefontein and South Deep mines, as
well as the gold plant and Cooke dump at Gold One’s recently acquired Rand Uranium.
“Gold One and Gold Fields are pleased to announce that they have entered into a
memorandum of understanding [MOU] to investigate the viability of concurrently
reprocessing their combined surface tailings deposits,’ read a statement issued by
both parties on Tuesday. “Should the joint venture [JV] proceed, the intention is to
reclaim and retreat the historical tailings material and current tailings to recover
residual gold, uranium and sulphur.’
These assets are expected to comprise in excess of 700 million tonnes and represent
over 60% of the total tailings material in the region.
The parties said a detailed scoping study would be done by mid-year, whereafter
they’ll decide on whether to proceed with a feasibility study. According to Gold One
CEO Neal Froneman, the company and Gold Fields should have a solid agreement in
place by year-end.
Froneman described the possible venture as the creation of “an Ergo on the West
Rand,’ referring to DRDGold’s highly profitable surface-reclamation operations on the
East Rand.
“The principle is commercially smart,’ he said. “The deal would also have a strong
environmental slant to it.’
He said the redepositing of residues would go a long way towards solving existing
environmental problems related to high levels of uranium and sulphide contained in
the dumps.
Asked whether Gold One foresaw opposition to such a transaction due to
environmental issues – similar to what First Uranium experienced at Mine Waste
Solutions – Froneman said the parties were already consulting with the relevant
stakeholders.
“We’re far more proactive in involving the environmental lobby groups,’ he said.
“They are important stakeholders and we treat them as such.’
MORE VALUE
The announcement came after both Gold Fields and the previous management of
Rand Uranium extensively explored separate strategies to extract more value from
their surface assets.
In 2010, Gold Fields completed economic studies on what it described as a uranium
project and a “fifth mine’ for the group in South Africa. It declared a mineral
resource of 475.6 million tonnes at its tailing storage facilities, which included gold
resources of 4.5 million ounces and uranium resources of 53.6 million pounds.
“This is an exciting opportunity to investigate the feasibility of extracting value from
our substantial surface resources in the West Rand,’ said Gold Fields CEO Nick
Holland in Tuesday’s announcement. “Gold Fields already has projects in place to
retreat our tailings, and the MOU with Gold One allows us to further explore a
relatively low risk opportunity to extract value from surface resources that are not
inherent in our share price.’
At Rand Uranium, the surface operations processes around 300,000 tonnes of tailings
material per month through the Cooke gold plant. According to Froneman, throughput
would be expanded to 400,000 tonnes within the next few months.
Since the announcement of the Rand Uranium transaction in April last year,
Froneman has maintained that uranium production would be key to the economic
rationale of the deal. Gold One has since commenced with a review of the Cooke
Uranium Project, which included the construction of a uranium plant.
