JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – TSX- and JSE-listed alluvial diamond miner Rockwell is putting together a private placement strategy to raise additional capital.

The company has also shortlisted several candidates for the CEO position, which became vacant in December when former CEO Dr John Bristow resigned.

“We need capital so we’re busy putting together a private placement strategy. We’ve got the support of key shareholders and we’ll get that out into the market as soon as we complete all the regulatory requirements,” acting Rockwell Diamonds CEO Dr Mark Bristow tells Mining Weekly Online.

Dr Mark Bristow, the brother of Dr John Bristow, is best known as the founding CEO of the highly successful London-listed gold-mining company Randgold Resources.

The Canadian company with a full JSE listing is keen to intensify its marketing effort in Johannesburg.

“We’re going to be knocking on the door of institutional investors in South Africa,” he says.

He has used the time prior to the announcement of the new CEO to focus the management team.
“We’ve got a good business plan and a good strategy and the diamond business is looking better.”

Rockwell, which is all about growth, has flatlined in the last two years, hit first by Pala Investments' failed hostile takeover bid and then by the global economic meltdown.

“For me, Rockwell is a platform to build a very exciting business, not too dissimilar to the way that we started out in Randgold Resources

“To build new companies takes time, tenacity and patience and then you also have to wait for some of the arrows to line up," says Bristow, a major investor in Rockwell in his own right.

Rockwell, taken to profitability under the previous team, is on the brink of commissioning the rebuilt Tirisano mine in Ventersdorp.

While the company is confident that it has adopted the correct process at Tirisano, it still needs to iron out sand bar issues its Saxendrift operation in the Northern Cape, where Holpan and Klipdam are operationally profitable.

With the upcoming equity raising, Rockwell expects to be able to deliver on its strategy for Wouterspan, which has been under care-and-maintenance since the global meltdown, and also to expand Tirisano, which balances its diamond profile with the addition of bridal stones.

Rockwell is not short of projects, and its Nuwejaarskraal asset is seen as attractive.

Department of Mineral Resources approval for the Section 11 transfer of ownership of Tirisano from the seller Etruscan to Rockwell is reportedly well advanced.
 

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