BusinessLive reports that Bouwer van Niekerk, lawyer for Optimum Coal’s business rescue practitioners (BRPs), told MPs on Tuesday that there are three bids on the table for the colliery, but the difficulty lay with funding the ramp-up of the mine.
“Optimum is a big mine. It requires a lot of money to ramp up. In the current market there are very limited players who have the capital to acquire an asset of this size, especially if you need to ramp it up. Covid-19 has made it more problematic,” he stated. The BRPs are thus looking to kick-start the mine themselves and are now in talks with a major creditor, Centaur Ventures, which could convert a large portion of its debt into equity in Optimum and potentially inject funds into the business to aid its restart. Owned by the Gupta family’s Tegeta Resources, Optimum went into business rescue in February 2018. The mine was unable to pay salaries in November 2018, and in April 2019 retrenched the workforce. The mine is not operational and is on care and maintenance. Van Niekerk advised that Koornfontein, another Tegeta-owned coal mine put into rescue with Optimum in 2018, had recently been sold and the transfer of mining rights was underway.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Lisa Steyn at BusinessLive
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