South Africa Plans First Mine Investment in Congo Since 2010 – by Franz Wild Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – October 26, 2015)

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South Africa’s Industrial Development Corp. said it plans to buy a stake in Alphamin Resources Corp., its first investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining industry since a dispute over a canceled project in 2010.

Alphamin temporarily suspended its stock from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Monday, before saying in a statement that it was in “advanced negotiations” for the Johannesburg-based IDC to invest in its Congolese unit. No shares were traded after the resumption, leaving the company valued at about C$71 million ($54 million).

“No definitive agreements have been entered into in respect of the financing and there can be no assurance that the financing will be completed,” the company said.

Alphamin is developing the Bisie tin mine in Congo’s eastern North Kivu province, where armed groups have controlled the area’s biggest mine on and off for years.

“We did our due diligence,” Abel Malinga, head of mining and metals at the IDC, said in a Thursday interview in Johannesburg. “We never run away from challenges.”

The South African development finance institution’s last mining asset in Congo, Africa’s biggest producer of tin and copper, was a stake in First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s Kolwezi copper project in the southern Katanga province.

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