Great Basin to make JSE debut on Friday
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Canadian-miner Great Basin Gold will start trading on the JSE's gold-mining sector on Friday (October 27), CEO Ferdi Dippenaar announced on Tuesday.
The company initially aimed for a secondary listing in July but was forced to make several postponements.
The JSE has approved the listing of the entire issued share capital of Great Basin. At the date of listing, the authorised share capital of Great Basin will comprise an unlimited number of ordinary shares with no par value, of which 112 665 213 ordinary shares have been issued.
The company has a primary listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the American Stock Exchange.
Earlier, Dippenaar said that listing on the JSE would offer South African investors exposure to its development projects in South Africa and its high-grade gold and silver deposit in Nevada, the US.
“When in production, both are expected to be shallow, low cash cost operations,” he said.
Its main South African property is the Burnstone project, located on the South Rand area of the Witwatersrand Basin.
Meanwhile, Great Basin Gold also announced that South Africa's Minerals and Energy department had successfully converted a further three prospecting rights to the new order and that the State had granted it two new-order rights solely in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA).
This brought the number of prospecting rights that have been granted to Great Basin to eight, covering an area of about 30 000 ha. The applications for conversion of one old order prospecting right and the application for the granting of one new order right were still outstanding, but the company said that the conversions were expected shortly.
The major portion of the planned mining area of the Burnstone gold project, known as 'Area 1' had now been converted. This area would give the Burnstone mine an estimated life of mine of 14 years.
Great Basin started with the construction of an access decline in accordance with its old-order prospecting rights on July 7. To October 18, the decline had been advanced to 155 m. Stage one of the development programme, that encompassed construction of the decline and taking a bulk sample, would be complete in about 16 months' time.
In terms of the MPRDA, which places prospecting and mining rights under the custodianship of the State, Great Basin, as holder of the prospecting rights, would also have an exclusive right to apply for the mining rights in the area.
“Great Basin intends to complete the administrative process by applying for a mining right before the end of the current year. The estimated time for the processing of a mining right is approximately one year and the company intends coinciding this with the finalisation of the bulk sample in order to make a seamless transition to the proposed mining operations,” it said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail the article:
Published: 2006/10/24 Printer
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
