JSE LISTINGS ARE GREAT NEWS, BUT IT COULD BE SO MUCH BETTER

Delegates at a junior mining conference in Johannesburg took on some recurring South African themes including poor public sector governance and lacklustre investment appetite. Will the sector ever truly revive, asks

IT looks like there is some life returning to the junior mining sector in Southern Africa but not much of it is coming the way of South Africa, although the listing of two mining juniors on the JSE over the past year made for some good news.

Those were Southern Palladium and Copper360, and there could be another two listings bound for the JSE in the next year or so. Those might be Blyvoor Gold and Marula Mining.

Marula is already listed on London’s AIM market, but CEO Jason Brewer told the Junior Indaba conference in June that he was keen to strengthen his company’s base in Africa and was looking at listings in Nairobi and on the JSE.

Blyvoor Gold is the ‘swansong’ project developed by serial mining entrepreneur Peter Skeat, who died in late March just as underground operations at the restructured mine formerly known as Blyvooruitzicht were getting back into full swing.

Skeat told Miningmx that when he bought the mine out of liquidation in 2016, he knew this would be his last project and he intended to make sure he developed it “right” – which meant he had no intention of bringing in partners as he had done with past developments.

Skeat’s career was one of innovation in spotting and grabbing overlooked opportunities but time and again these developments were marred by subsequent infighting with his partners.

The classic example is Ergo, over which Skeat fell out with his Australian partner Brian Frost and listed Australian junior Mintails. The project ended up wholly owned by DRDGold, which has made a stunning success of it, turning Ergo into its flagship operation.

This year’s Junior Indaba threw up a number of differing opinions on where to go mining in Africa as companies talked up their projects.

Copper360 CEO Jan Nelson waxed lyrical about the benefits of developing his copper company near Springbok in the Northern Cape despite the issues with Eskom, while Andrada Mining (formerly Afritin) CEO Anthony Viljoen did the same for Namibia.

That was despite the Namibian government’s recent comments that it wanted to take a stake in all mining operations in the country. That caused a plunge in Namibian-based mining company stock prices, in particular uranium miner Paladin, which wants to restart its mothballed mine in the county. But the Namibian government subsequently clarified its stance to say it wanted