JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) - New platinum-gold junior Platfields, which will list on the main board of the JSE "within weeks", will raise capital on the exchange only in July in order to coincide with the new tax incentives for mining companies introduced by South Africa Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.

Platfields CEO Bongani Mbindwane said on Thursday that the company had chosen July as a target date for the raising of the first tranche of R200-million to coincide the 50% tax break for mining juniors, which was gazetted last week.

He said that July was also the month in which world stimulus packages were expected to begin taking effect.

South Africa's tax breaks would bear no resemblance to Canada's flow-through scheme, South Africa's Treasury having opted for a direct tax incentive on investments made into mining juniors and other small businesses, which were not yet cash-flow generative.

Although Platfields would raise capital in July, it intended listing ahead of its capital raising.

"We are well capitalised for another 24 months, which is why, when we list very imminently, we are not going to be raising any money at all," Mbindwane said.

The company's current rate of "cash burn" was some R1,2-million a month and the company was sitting on R70-million in cash.

Rather than clinch an offtake agreement with a platinum major, Platfields intended remaining independent and instead developing a value chain within its business.

The big current focus was to drill the company's four properties in order to prove up the resources and the reserves and then to mine them.

The company was targeting millions of ounces of platinum-group elements (PGEs) across all three of its PGE properties.

Its principal Berg project was close to Anglo Platinum's Der Brochen project and Aquarius' Everest South.

Leeuwkop and Tigerpoort, being contiguous, might be developed as a single entity, and there were instances of grades ranging up to 37 g/t at the comany's only gold property, Grootfonteinberg, which was close to Simmer & Jack Mine's Beta gold property in the Pilgrim's Rest-Sabie goldfield.

Mbindwane said that all the company's projects were near to the surface and would not require excessive capital to develop. They were also close to transport, power and water infrastructure.

In addition to the R200-million that Platfields intended raising in July, the company planned to return to the market again in 2010 to raise a further R250-million.

Platfields’ operations director Joshua Hattingh said the company was “halfway” towards completion of a 12-month exploration drilling programme to define a resource at its 6 000-hectare Berg PGE project located at the southern end of the eastern limb of the Bushveld. Berg exploration data to date indicated a total potential target of up to 16 million ounces.

At Leeuwkop, the first phase of a two-phase drilling programme comprising 29 boreholes had begun in December 2008, Hattingh said, while at the Grootfonteinberg Gold Project in the Transvaal Drakensberg Goldfields, a twophase drilling programme comprising 13 boreholes had been initiated. Grootfonteinberg exploration data indicated a target of up to 3,43 million ounces.