JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South African gold producer DRDGold, which has an ongoing exploration drilling programme in neighbouring Zimbabwe, has not been asked to pay ground rents.

The JSE-listed company has 25 000 ha of exploration tenement in Zimbabwe, which it acquired prior to the issue of ground rents being raised.

DRDGold has a 50% Zimbabwean partner and has spent a moderate $3-million to date on drilling an exploration target near Gweru and compiling geochemical reports on the Leny, Ascot and John Bull prospects near the town of Norton, 40 km west of Harare.

“We’re not spending big capital on infrastructure, but we are increasingly moving towards a scenario of bulk sampling and also extracting some gold to help offset the costs of looking into this resource,” says DRDGold CEO Niël Pretorius.

He says, however, that DRDGold is not, at this stage, being asked to pay ground rents and, in response to a question from JP Morgan Cazenove analyst Allan Cooke, said the potential exposure to higher lease prices was being looked into.

On reports that platinum miners are being asked to pay ground rents of $1 000/ha, Pretorius said that, at some stage, DRDGold would probably engage the regulator on the sensibilities of imposing excessively high ground rents on exploration targets.

DRDGold has for some time been hoping to exploit near-surface opportunities in Zimbabwe, where, in Pretorius’s words, the gold orebodies are “just too good to ignore”.

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