WKN 883 686 ISIN CA12932K1030 Quelle: Minesite.com Date: April 07, 2006 Caledonia May Be A Very Different Company By This Time Next Year. By Jack Hammer There’s lots going on inside Caledonia Mining, the diversified mining company with listings on Aim, on Nasdaq and in Toronto. There’s the Barbrook gold mine just south of Nelspruit in South Africa, which Caledonia hopes to return to profitability this year. There’s the Rooipoort platinum exploration project on the northern limb of the Bushveld, where a 43-101 compliant inferred resource contains an estimated 428,600 ounces of palladium, 274,000 ounces of platinum, 33,000 tonnes of nickel and 20,000 tonnes of copper. There’s the Nama cobalt project in Zambia, which according to Caledonia chief executive Stefan Hayden is “the only primary cobalt deposit of any size ever discovered”. There’s diamond exploration in the Kalahari region of Zambia and at Kikerk Lake in Canada; there’s gold exploration at the Eesterling and Zandrivier regions of South Africa; and there’s the Moordrift, Jaagbaan and Grasvally farms with mineralization down-dip from Rooipoort, just recently acquired from Falconbridge. Is this a mish-mash of projects inside a directionless company? Not at all, says level-headed analyst Charles Kernot of UK broker Seymour Pierce. “Their strategy is to be diversified - they want to have a little bit of everything, or at least a little bit of a few things”. Mr Kernot even speculates that Caledonia chairman Rupert Pardoe’s past life as a senior figure within the highly diversified Anglo American may also have an influence in putting such a wide range of assets into the company. Caledonia chief Stefan Hayden agrees that to date a mixture of commodities has been the goal. “We are a very diversified company. I personally get nervous when I see companies tied to a single commodity”, he says. But nevertheless there’s about to be a step change in Caledonia’s structure. In response to consistent share price weakness in the face of the commodities boom and a lack of appreciation from the market, Caledonia is about to get simpler. “I realise that the market doesn’t like diversified juniors,” says Mr Hayden. “It appears to want – in terms of the juniors – relatively pure plays. That’s a lesson that has been coming through to us for quite some time now.” The new plan, which will be formally elucidated at the company’s AGM, due on 16th April, is to turn Caledonia into what Mr Hayden calls “an incubator”, and to allow the gold, platinum and cobalt projects to stand alone as separate listed vehicles. It hasn’t helped that Barbrook hasn’t been profitable for a while, and with increased milling capacity is only just coming into its own in the face of currency and other cost pressures. ..........................stark gekürzt..........................
