THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange will get its first mining listing in more than two years on Wednesday when coal and base metals firm Shuka Minerals debuts on AltX.
Previously Edenville Energy, the company changed name to Shuka in September 2023 following a strategy and management refresh. This included £1.46m in new investment provided by Quinton van der Burgh’s Q Global Commodities (QGC) via its Dubai subsidiary AUO Commercial Brokerage, and Tanzanian firm Gathoni Machai Investments (GMI) in which Jason Brewer has a stake.
Brewer, a partner with Van der Burgh, is the CEO of Marula Minerals, a critical minerals company operating in South Africa, in which they are both invested.
Shuka CEO Richard Lloyd said on Tuesday the priority was to return Rukwa, a coal mine in Tanzania, back to production of up to 5,000 tons per month of washed coal. There was also about 63 tons of stockpiled material that could be rewashed which would also stress test the existing wash plant.
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the asset. The geology is really straightforward,” Lloyd said in an interview with Miningmx. “It’s been unloved and perhaps suffered from a lack of funding,” he said of the mine.
Shuka is also hoping to conclude the acquisition of Kabwe, a historic zinc/lead operation in Zambia. The mine, currently in mothballs, contains an estimated $4bn of resource that Lloyd reckons can be reaccessed again once the shafts have been dewatered and infrastructure is improved.
The assets are currently owned by Leopard Exploration & Mining, a company in which veteran mining financier and commentator Peter Major is involved. Completion for the deal has been pushed out to June.
“The current resource of Kabwe that we know of is 6.8 million tons at about 13% zinc and 3.5% lead. Now, that is with 1960s and ’70s drilling,” said Lloyd.
Dewatering of the pit at Kabwe will present some challenges owing to potential contamination of the water. Said Lloyd: “This is one of the of the first parts of the project that we’ll need to do is get our baseline ESG knowledge there”.
Kabwe is currently the subject of a class action involving Anglo American. Members of the Kabwe community are suing Anglo American in the UK for failing to protect them against environmental harm. Anglo contests that it was not the outright owner of the mine during the time of alleged contamination.
Closed in 1995, Kabwe mined was nationalised in the Seventies will control being handed over to ZCCM, Zambia’s state-owned mining company.
