Friday, February 12, 2010.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Mariaan Webb.

Making headlines today:

DRDGold CEO Niël Pretorius says that the company's Blyvooruitzicht gold mine is on track to emerge from judicial management by March.

He says that the judicial management is serving its purpose of staving off hostile creditor action.
The gold produced from underground at Blyvoor was trending upwards and had managed to reach the higher-grade areas.

When DRDGold placed Blyvoor under judicial management last year, the company said that it was necessary to protect the business during a temporary period of labour, seismic and hostile creditor setback in order to allow the mine to advance back into the higher-grade areas.

Uranium-miner Cameco Corp will get its first look in years at the state of the underground workings at its Cigar Lake project, in Saskatchewan.

After pumping the water out of the flooded mine and refurbishing the main shaft, Cameco sent crews down on Wednesday to the main working level, which is 480 m below surface.

The focus for the next few months will be on assessing the condition of and securing the underground systems.

This will be followed by the restoration of underground mine systems and infrastructure, ahead of resuming construction work.

Also making headlines:

Diversified miner Rio Tinto plans to spend at least 5-billion-dollars on capital expenditure during 2010.
South Africa's mining production fell by 6,7% in 2009.
South African miners will start paying royalties on March first.
And, South African ferrochrome producer Assmang aims to produce ferromanganese at Machadodorp.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit miningweekly.com.