This podcast is brought to you by Ukwazi Mining - Bringing relevant mining, engineering & strategic consultancy services to a dynamic industry.

Friday, November 20, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Lindsey Berry.

Making headlines today:

Simmers CEO Gordon Miller says that shareholders should reject disgruntled empowerment company Vulisango's non-transformational, JCI-linked attempt to gain control of gold miner Simmer & Jack without paying a premium.

Miller says that only one of Vulisango's eight new board candidates qualifies as a historically disadvantaged South African. He says that a background to Vulisango's bid is its need to convince the court, in a separate legal battle with mining company JCI, that its stake in Simmers could never be diluted to below 26%.

He says that its nomination of new directors goes against the spirit of transformation, which is especially so, given that Simmers' proposed candidates are likely to reflect that spirit.

JSE-listed Firestone Energy and its joint-venture partner, Sekoko Coal, have acquired surface rights to a farm that forms an important part of its Waterberg coal project.

The JV acquired the surface rights of the 1 160-hectare Smitspan farm, in the Waterberg region. The farm is said to contain the majority of the continuous coal sequence contained under all six farms that forms part of the JV agreement, which was signed by the parties in July.

The JV is planning to start a small-scale mining operation at a rate of 60 000-tons a month run-of-mine by the end of the year. This is expected to yield between 30 000 and 40 000 tons a month of saleable coal.

Also making headlines:

State-owned power utility Eskom holds back on awarding new contracts at the coal-fuelled Kusile power station.
Vancouver-based New Gold suspends mining at its Cerro San Pedro mine.
NovaGold may consider restarting the Rock Creek mine in 2010.
And, TSX-listed Lake Shore Gold will raise 100-million-Candanian-dollars for its Timmins projects.

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