[miningmx.com] – THARISA Minerals is the latest company to roll off the conveyor belt of the Pouroulis family, led by patriarch, Loucas Pouroulis.
A Cypriot by birth, Pouroulis came to South Africa after having been trained in metallurgy at the University of Athens. Mining was in his blood: his father was a copper miner in Cyrpus; the Pouroulis family lived near one of the mine’s slag dumps.
There is now, however, a third generation of Pouroulis’s plying their trade in the sector. Loucas’s eldest son, Adonis, is the chairman of the UK-listed Petra Diamonds whilst his brother, Phoevos, heads Tharisa, which is platinum/chrome miner. In truth, the Pouroulis family has an abiding obsession with mining platinum.
Loucas Pouroulis’ first encounter with platinum – Lefkochrysos – was unkindly referred to as Lefko-‘crisis’ following a decline it the platinum price around 1987 which left the elder Pouroulis’ plans in tatters. He went on to run Consolidated Modderfontein, a gold mine, before exorcising the ghost of Lekkochrysos after founding the breathtakingly successful, Eland Platinum.
Lefkochrysos may have been a victim of a surprise weakness in the platinum price, but Eland reversed all that when, in 2007, it was sold to Xstrata for $1bn. It netted Pouroulis a fortune – partly as it was sold at the top of the platinum market – and allowed him the space and time to set about listing other platinum companies like some people collect vintage cars.
Pouroulis listed Keaton Energy, a coal play operating in the thermal coal fields of Mpumalanga, and played with other platinum and gold ventures as far afield as the Congo. He considered, for instance, the listing of Kameni, a company with platinum prospects on the Eastern Bushveld before eventually plumping for Tharisa.
Phoevos says the company, which plans to raise R1bn on listing, has targeted average steady state production of 144,000 ounces a year of platinum group metals, and 1,85 million tonnes a year of chrome concentrate in its 2016 financial year.
About 60% of revenue is chrome, which is controversially exported to China; controversial, because the local ferrochrome industry has complained that providing the Chinese with chrome ore is making the South Africa industry less competitive.
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