TRASHED CONGO MINERS HAVE THEIR ADMIRERS
DRC's copper and gold in focus - Big elephant country beckons again
The blighted Katanga Province copper-cobalt brownfields treasures re-zoom into focus, along with gold to the far north east.
Author: Barry Sergeant
Posted: Friday , 17 Jul 2009
JOHANNESBURG -
London-listed diversified African miner Camec on Wednesday announced that it could receive a full take-over offer, following strong upward action in its stock price. Alongside same-day news of an effective USD 488m joint venture bid announcement by Randgold Resources and AngloGold Ashanti for Moto Goldmines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's mineral treasures have suddenly come back into sharp relief.
Camec operates the super-rich Mukondo cobalt-copper deposit in Katanga Province, and Moto owns 70% of a gold concession in the far north east of the country, sporting more than 20m ounces of resources, and rating as one of the world's most bedazzling gold prospects, given its high grade and relative ease of accessibility.
The DRC's relative lack of infrastructure, and other challenges - notably on the political risk front, triggered accentuated damage for miners after metals and commodities peaked, generally in mid-2008. Only the biggest balance sheets have held out; Freeport-McMoRan, the world's biggest publicly traded copper digger, completed the USD 1.8bn Tenke Fungurume Phase I copper-cobalt mine earlier this year, in which Lundin also holds a material stake. First Quantum continues development of its Kolwezi tailings project.
There has been relative capital and profitability starvation elsewhere, and trashed stock prices; Katanga Mining, which operates the huge brownfields Kamoto and KOV pits, recently completed a massive capital restructuring, including a hugely dilutive rights issue, leaving Swiss-based commodities trader and miner Glencore as 79% shareholder. Glencore is also the biggest shareholder in Xstrata, which famously wants to merge with Anglo American, which earlier this decade once again quite the Zambian copper belt, part of the Katanga Province system.
Some rum money is going on Xstrata gearing itself up as the potential bidder for Camec, as part of a consolidation process that has long been anticipated within the DRC and Zambia copperbelts. Glencore is already a major player in cobalt markets, and has spent time in the past few years signing uptake agreements across the central African belts. There is also at least some Stroh rum money going on speculation that Glencore's potential partner at Katanga Mining could be none other than the world's No 2 mining company by value, Vale.
If this seems like Christmas during mid-year, today there was also speculation that Vale could bid USD 25bn for US-based Mosaic, one of the world's leading potash and phosphate miners. Back in big elephant country, for followers of fashion, it may also be worth noting that Anvil possibly ranks as the most discounted of the serious DRC copper miners, trading at around roughly one third of capital invested in Katanga Province over the past decade. Given improved pricing conditions for copper, a trend in place for some months now, Anvil may well be on the way to finalizing financing for its world class Kinsevere copper project.
Quelle: http://www.mineweb.net/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/...86368&sn=Detail
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