Great Basin Gold Ltd. (fka GBGLF)

[goldenpolarbear]

NEAL FRONEMAN: We have traditionally spent between R3 billion and R3.5 billion on what we call stay-in-business capital. Again, in 2017 of that R4 billion probably about R3.5 billion is stay-in-business capital, so it’s all reserved development, it’s maintenance and so on. So that’s necessary to sustain the business you have. We’ve got a couple of projects that we will be spending money on this year, Burnstone, there’s about R400 million there and there’s some drop-down projects at Kloof and Driefontein, so those are considered growth projects, they would make up the balance. So there’s about R500 million that goes into those projects and you have to spend that sort of money to create sustainability. We see Sibanye being a 1.5 million producer for probably at least the next five to ten years. It’s very dependent on gold price, if the rand/gold price is lower than what we’ve just discussed then we’re going to have to take unprofitable ounces out of production. The best way to look at it, however, is we have a 30-odd million ounce reserve and if we do 1.5 million ounces/year we have 20 years of life. So we have really turned Sibanye from a company that had five, six or maybe seven years of life into a company that has got at least 20 years of life just in the gold division.

WARREN THOMPSON: Just as an aside for those investors familiar with the Burnstone project, which was previously run by Great Basin Gold, just tell us what you’re expecting in terms of production from that this year and potentially next year?

NEAL FRONEMAN: Well, it’s a completely new project, it’s the same Burnstone project, as you say, that was owned by Great Basin Gold but we have started almost with a blank sheet. Effectively what we bought is a mine with just a bit of infrastructure. It will take another two years to do the underground development and that’s about another R1 billion of capital investment. Burnstone will be a much smaller higher grade mine than what Great Basin modelled, we’ve redone all the borehole drilling, all the borehole logs have been redone and checked, a new geological model has been developed and, of course, a new mine plan.

WARREN THOMPSON: Great, we look forward to seeing how that develops. But in the meantime obviously 2016 I think was the year of the deals that you had done both executing Aquarius, as well as the Rustenburg operations and you announced today that the Rustenburg operations had turned the corner in terms of operating profit, it had made a small profit for November and December, and you alluded to replanning the Rustenburg operations, just give us an update as to what you’re doing there and how you expect that operation to perform.

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/mineweb/platinum-group-metals/listen-rights-offer-coming-in-may/

Why did Neal Froneman even mention the Great Basin Gold name? Hmmm... http://www.polity.org.za/article/business-rescue-of-southgold-gives-mine-a-new-lease-on-life-2014-08-07

What exactly transpired regarding the supposed South African Business Rescue? http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPJHC/2013/33.html