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Africa Mining

Friedland seeks funding for Congo project – by Christopher Donville (Bloomberg/Toronto Star – September 14, 2012)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

VANCOUVER—Robert Friedland, the billionaire who spent the past decade building a $6 billion (U.S.) copper mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, is asking investors to fund projects in an even riskier locale—the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ivanplats Ltd., a Friedland-controlled mining company, plans to raise about $300 million (Canadian) in an initial public offering in Toronto, according to a person with knowledge of the IPO who declined to be identified because the amount hasn’t been published. Vancouver-based Ivanplats seeks funding for its Kamoa copper project in Congo and to repay debt owed to Israeli investor Dan Gertler, who sold the company a zinc mine in the African country last year, according to a prospectus filed with regulators Sept. 10.

Friedland, 62, five months ago lost control of the Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia after disputes with the government and joint venture partner Rio Tinto Group. He’s now proposing a mining development in Congo, whose government seized copper assets from Canada’s First Quantum Minerals Ltd. in 2010, and in South Africa, where the mining industry is convulsed by labor unrest.

“I would call the DRC the ultimate high-risk, high-reward mining destination—it’s one that’s on the radar of all serious mining companies because of its huge wealth and mineral resources,” James Smither, head of the mining practice at Maplecroft, a Bath, England-based risk-analysis company, said by telephone.

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South African mine strikes spread – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – September 13, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — Rampaging protesters are wreaking havoc in the world’s leading platinum sector, forcing the closure of another major mining operation as South African workers grow increasingly militant in the aftermath of a deadly police crackdown.

Anglo American Platinum Ltd., the top global producer, decided to shut down four of its shafts on Wednesday when about 1,500 protesting mine workers – many waving machetes and sticks – blockaded roads and marched to the company’s gates near Rustenburg in South Africa’s platinum belt.

Amplats said it closed the mines temporarily because it feared for the safety of its 19,000 workers, who were already facing threats from the protesters on Wednesday. South Africa produces about 80 per cent of the world’s platinum, and Amplats alone is responsible for nearly 40 per cent of the world’s production.

The wildcat strikes have also begun spreading into South Africa’s gold industry, with 15,000 workers off the job at Gold Fields Ltd., the world’s fourth-biggest gold producer. Security guards fired tear gas at thousands of protesting workers on Wednesday when the workers tried to stop a passing train at the mine site.

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Robert Friedland returns with Ivanplats IPO – by Peter Koven (National Post – September 12, 2012)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Robert Friedland is back. The legendary mining promoter has launched a long-awaited initial public offering for Ivanplats Ltd., which controls massive mineral deposits in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The IPO is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, sources said, and could be the largest on the Toronto Stock Exchange this year.
 
The single largest Canadian IPO of the year is Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. (at $575-million), but that offering was in Hong Kong. The largest TSX IPO was Argent Energy Trust, which raised $244-million. Ivanplats will likely be bigger.
 
Previous media reports suggested Mr. Friedland wanted to raise as much as $1-billion with this deal. However, sources said expectations are much lower than that, given turbulent market conditions and high risk aversion among investors right now.

The offering marks a return to the TSX for Mr. Friedland, who disappeared five months ago when he resigned from Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. (later re-named Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd.). He left Ivanhoe after Rio Tinto Ltd. took majority control of the company and its flagship project, the Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia.

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UPDATE 2: World’s biggest platinum producer Amplats hit by unrest – by Christy Filen (Mineweb.com – September 1, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

Anglo American Platinum spokesperson, Mpumi Sithole has confirmed the miner is working with police to contain an outbreak of intimidation but is unclear how many people are involved.

JOHANNESBURG (Mineweb) –  Anglo American Platinum on Thursday said its employees are not on strike but that some were unable to report for night shift last night due to intimidation and threats by ‘unidentified individuals’.
 
In a move that would suggest an evacuation of sorts, Amplats have decided to ‘re-direct employees to a neutral place’ to ensure their safety and security.
 
“Our priority is to ensure the safety of our people while we find solutions to address the situation. We will provide update information as it becomes available,” said the company in an email to media.
 
This update comes after the miner announced last night that it was trying to contain an outbreak of intimidation at its Rustenburg mines and had been working 24/7 to try to prevent the unrest.

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South Africa labor unrest spreads; 36,000 miners strike – by AP (Canadian Business Magazine – September 10, 2012)

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

MARIKANA, South Africa (AP) — Chanting miners wielding machetes, clubs and spears marched from shaft to shaft of South Africa’s beleaguered Lonmin platinum mine Monday, trying to intimidate the few workers who reported for duty in the fourth week of a crippling strike whose impact has already included dozens of miners killed by police.

At one point on their 10-kilometer (six-mile) trek, a striker lashed a whip at a man they accused of reporting for work. He took off across the scrubland with dozens of men waving machetes and clubs in pursuit. The man was saved by police officers who pulled him into their moving vehicle.

Meanwhile, labor unrest spread in the country, with an illegal strike by more than 10,000 workers halting operations at the west section of Gold Fields International’s KDC gold mine. The strikes are rooted in rivalry between the main National Union of Mineworkers and a breakaway union.

At the KDC gold mine, for instance, spokesman Sven Lunsche said the strike started Sunday night and that senior managers met Monday with strikers demanding the removal of NUM shop stewards and a minimum monthly wage of R12,500 ($1,560).

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South African police, security shoot and injure 4 at gold mine in latest mining clash – by Michelle Faul (The Associated Press/Regina Leader-Post – September 4, 2012)

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

JOHANNESBURG – South African police and security guards fired rubber bullets and tear gas Monday at sacked gold miners who were attacking colleagues to block them from working, the mine owner said. Police said four people were wounded at the mine that used to be partially owned by the president’s nephew.
 
The clash at the Gold Fields mine east of Johannesburg, reported by police and Neal Froneman, the CEO of Gold One International, was the latest violence to hit South Africa’s mines in months of unrest.
 
Company spokesman Sven Lunsche said some 12,000 of the company’s workers “continue to engage in an unlawful and unprotected strike” that began Wednesday. He said it involved an internal dispute between local union leaders and members of the National Union of Mineworkers, the country’s largest union.
 
After apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa pressed to share the country’s vast mineral wealth with its impoverished black majority. But the hoped-for result has not occurred. A small black elite has become billionaires off mining while most South Africans continue to struggle against mounting unemployment, deeper poverty and a widening gap between rich and poor that makes the country one of the most unequal on Earth.

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South Africa’s gold and platinum miners – between a rock and a hard place – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – September 4, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

Wage demands and labour unrest fuelled by inter-union rivalries and maverick politicians like Julius Malema are putting South Africa’s gold and platinum mines in jeopardy.

LONDON (Mineweb) –  It can’t be a comfortable place to be – running a South African centred gold or platinum mining company at the present time. Serious labour disputes, which can boil over into violent confrontations, when one has workforces the size of those on most of the significant mining operations, has to be very worrying for top management, particularly when a high profile, charismatic, supposedly sidelined politician like Julius Malema – who has long called for mine nationalisation – starts getting involved. Indeed, the Malema factor may prove to be the most disturbing development of all unless the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party can somehow bring him to heel.
 
On this subject reports surfaced in the South African press yesterday of an arrest warrant being issued for Malema on corruption charges and of an investigation for tax evasion.  Perhaps a recipe for making a martyr out of a maverick whatever the truth of the allegations!
 
Supposedly the violence which afflicted the Marikana platinum mine with its more than 20,000 employees, and which led to the deaths of over 40 people, was drummed up through inter-union rivalries with a new union the AMCU, trying to muscle in on the established NUM which it saw as part of the ANC establishment and claimed was not fully representing the miners’ aspirations. 

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South Africa withdraws murder charges against miners – for now – by Susan Njanji (Globe and Mail – September 2, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

PRETORIA – Agence France-Presse – South Africa said Sunday that controversial murder charges against 270 miners over the deaths of fellow workers shot by police, the worst such clash since the apartheid era, will be provisionally dropped.

Following a public furor, acting national director of prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba, said that after having sought an explanation from the department’s lead prosecutors, she had taken the decision to review the charge.

“The murder charge against the current 270 suspects, which was provisional anyway, will be formally withdrawn provisionally in court on their next court appearance,” Ms. Jiba told reporters.

A final decision on the charges will be taken after a series of investigations into the shootings, hich left 34 dead and 78 wounded, are complete. They include a judicial commission of inquiry appointed by President Jacob Zuma, which has until January to present its findings. Thursday’s decision to charge the miners over the August 16 killings during a wildcat strike at the Lonmin PLC platinum mine had triggered outrage.

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Murder charges stun and enrage South African miners – by Lydia Polgreen (The New York Times News Service/Globe and Mail – August 31, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Two weeks after the police opened fire on a crowd of 3,000 workers engaged in a wildcat strike at a platinum mine near Johannesburg, killing 34 people in the bloodiest labour unrest since the end of apartheid, prosecutors are bringing murder charges against a surprising set of suspects: the miners themselves.

Using an obscure legal doctrine frequently relied upon by the apartheid government in its dying days, prosecutors did not accuse the police officers who shot and killed the strikers as they surged forward, machetes in hand. Instead, officials said Thursday that they were pursuing murder charges against the 270 miners who were arrested after the dust settled and the shooting stopped.

It was the latest astonishing turn in a saga that has gripped South Africa, unleashing a torrent of rage over deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment.

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Anglo CEO [Cynthia Carroll] Doubles Down on New Mines Amid Falling Demand – by Jeremy Kahn (Bloomberg Markets Magazine – September 2012)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Driving northeast from Santiago, the road corkscrews toward the shark’s-grin skyline of the Andes Mountains. In winter, Santiago’s smart set plies this route, heading for virgin-powder days and pisco-sour nights at La Parva ski resort. Most have no inkling that in a high mountain valley just over the ridgeline, excavators the size of houses have sculpted the mountainside into a steeply terraced pit 1,800 feet deep, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.

This is Los Bronces, one of the world’s richest copper mines. Anglo American Plc (AAL), the London-based company that owns Los Bronces, spent $2.8 billion from 2007 to 2011 to double the size of the mine. And Los Bronces is just one of four megaprojects that Anglo Chief Executive Officer Cynthia Carroll has initiated or pushed through construction since she took over in 2007 — each representing a wager in excess of $1 billion on the continued rise of China, India and other emerging markets.

Los Bronces is also at the center of a legal battle between Anglo and Codelco, the Chilean state-owned mining company. The dispute — over whether Anglo can block Codelco from exercising an option to buy half of Anglo’s Chilean subsidiary — has spooked Anglo investors and weighed on the company’s share price, which dropped more than 15 percent from the time the controversy erupted in October to August 8.

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Politically-divided commission narrowly approves new SEC ‘Conflict Minerals’ rule – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – August 23, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

Beginning in 2014, public companies listed on U.S. exchanges will have to disclose their reliance on minerals from the DRC and surrounding nations.

RENO (MINEWEB) –  While not the only unhappy ones, it could be argued that the unhappiest stakeholders in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s adoption of a controversial provision governing conflict minerals may have been the Republican members of commission.
 
On a 3 to 2 vote, the commission voted for Section 1502, the “conflict minerals provision”, requiring companies listed on U.S. stock markets to examine their supply chains to determine and disclose if their productions contain minerals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo or its neighboring nations.
 
SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and fellow Democrats Luis A. Aguilar and Elisse Walter voted in favor of the new regulation, while Republican commissioners Daniel Gallagher and Troy Paredes opposed the rule.

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SUSTAINABILITY OF STRATEGIC MINERALS [PGM’s, chromite, manganese and others] IN SOUTHERN AFRICA AND POTENTIAL CONFLICTS AND PARTNERSHIPS – by Dr. Stephen Burgess (2010)

Dr. Stephen F. Burgess is Associate Professor, Department of International Security, U.S. Air War College. His three books are South Africa’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (with Helen Purkitt), Smallholders and Political Voice in Zimbabwe, and The United Nations under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 1992-97. He has published numerous articles and book chapters on African security issues.

Dr. Burgess helped to lead in the organization and execution of the Air Force Africa Command Symposium held at Air University. Since 1999, Dr. Burgess has taught courses on international security, peace and stability operations, and African regional and cultural studies. He is also an Associate Director of the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center. Dr. Burgess holds a Ph.D. from Michigan State University and has been a faculty member at Vanderbilt University, the University of Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and Hofstra University.

The principal sustainability challenge in Southern Africa for the United States and its allies is uncertain access to strategic minerals, particularly platinum group metals (PGMs), chromium and manganese; and rare earth minerals, cobalt and uranium. The causes of this challenge are increasing global demand and supply shortages caused by inadequate infrastructure, politicization of the mining industry, and China‟s aggressive, monopolistic behavior in pursuit of minerals.

The challenge is most acute in the five Southern African countries of South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. Environmental sustainability of the mining industry is another concern. The purpose of this paper is to provide scope to the problem and recommend steps the United States can take in order to ensure continued access.

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Ghosts of apartheid haunt memorials at [South Africa] Lonmin mine – by David Dolan (Globe and Mail – August 24, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

MARIKANA, SOUTH AFRICA – South Africans held a memorial service on Thursday at a mine where police shot dead 34 strikers, bloodshed that revived memories of apartheid-era violence and laid bare workers’ anger over enduring inequalities since the end of white rule.

Some 500 people crammed into a marquee pitched at the platinum mine, near what has been dubbed the “Hill of Horror” where police opened fire on striking miners in the deadliest security incident since apartheid ended in 1994.

Crowds spilled out into the scorched, dusty fields outside, listening to hymns and prayers. Women wrapped in blankets wept and mourners placed flowers at the scene. Other memorials took place around the country, including in downtown Johannesburg.

“Such a killing of people, of children, who haven’t done anything wrong and they didn’t have to die this way,” said Baba Goloza whose two sons died. He blamed mine owner Lonmin for not taking care of its workers at its Marikana mine, northwest of Johannesburg.

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S. African platinum mine strikes spread – by Javier Blas (Financial Times/Globe and Mail – August 23, 2012)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Platinium mine after platinum mine, the labour unrest in South Africa is spreading. Terence Goodlace, chief executive at Impala, the world’s second-biggest platinum miner, warned on Thursday of a “significant risk to the industry.”

The warning came only a day after workers at two other platinum mines also demanded higher salaries and blocked the entrance to several underground pits, prompting concerns of full-blown industrial unrest in South Africa, one of the world’s most important commodity producers. The country is home not just to platinum but also to significant deposits of dozens of other minerals.

Yet, industry executives, analysts and bankers point out that the unrest so far remains concentrated in the restive platinum sector, with little sign that it is spreading to other commodities such as gold and iron ore, which have a history of better labour relations.

The violence – which has left at least 44 people dead and more than 70 injured – started two weeks ago when a group of drill operators at London-listed Lonmin demanded substantial wage increases amid a turf war between rival unions.

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Unrest spreads in violence-hit South Africa mining belt – by Ed Stoddard (Reuters.com – August 22, 2012)

http://www.reuters.com/

RUSTENBURG, South Africa – (Reuters) – Labor unrest in South Africa’s platinum belt spread on Wednesday, raising concerns that anger over low wages and poor living conditions could generate fresh violence after 34 striking miners were shot dead by police last week.

The strike that started last week at Lonmin’s Marikana mine has driven up platinum prices and stoked worries about investing in Africa’s biggest economy, where chronic unemployment and income disparities threaten social stability.

At Marikana, a somber-looking President Jacob Zuma stood under a parasol held by an aide to address around 2,000 subdued miners. In the Xhosa and Zulu languages, he said there was no need for workers to die in a Labor dispute. “This is painful to all of us. It is not acceptable for people to die where talks can be held. But I do feel your pain and have come personally to express that,” he said.

The world’s top platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum, said on Wednesday it had received a demand for a pay increase from its South African workers, while Royal Bafokeng Platinum said a Labor action by about 500 miners interrupted work at a shaft at its Rasimone mine.

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