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.
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