[miningmx.com] – HOLGOUN Group, in which former Lonmin director Sivi
Gounden is a director, has sold prospecting rights over a portion of Lonmin’s Marikana
mine for $4m, equal to just under R36m at the current exchange rate.
This follows an protracted dispute between Holgoun Group’s subsidiary, Keysha
Investments, and Lonmin over the award of prospecting rights that gave Keysha the
right to sell nickel and chrome produced as a by-product of platinum mining.
The matter, which was edging towards a contest in court, caused consternation at the
time as it came months after Imperial Crown Trading claimed it had prospecting rights
over a portion of Sishen Iron Ore Company’s properties.
The two disputes also threw aspersions over the integrity of South Africa’s Minerals
and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA), as well as questions about
security of tenure in South African mining.
The Department of Mineral Resources has since sought to iron out legislative wrinkles
that allow a company access to revenue of minerals that are mined as by-products of
the primary metal, in this case, platinum. Amendments to the MPRDA, however, have
not been clarified by the DMR.
The R36m paid by Lonmin compensates Holgoun for abandoning the prospecting right
over the associated minerals produced at Marikana and for exploration work already
undertaken by the company, it said in a statement to the JSE.
Clearly, a proposal hatched in January that the two companies share the revenue from
the associated minerals in a joint venture has also been ditched, possibly owing to
difficult circumstances in the mining market, as well as Lonmin’s liquidity problems –
including the possibility it could shut production at Marikana.
In a statement to the JSE, Lonmin said the DMR had “executed a notarial amendment’
over the Middelkraal mining right in respect of a small portion of its mining area.
The amendment permits Lonmin to “exploit and dispose of the associated minerals
necessarily extracted as part of its core business of mining platinum group metals’. It
also holds new order mining rights for PGMs and associated minerals at Marikana.
