JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The judicial managers have given Pamodzi Gold six days to come up with cash or have the entire group plunged into liquidation, SBT Trust’s Enver Motala told Mining Weekly Online on Wednesday.

Motala said that the deadline of Wednesday April 8 for the continuance of the judicial management of Pamodzi Gold’s Free State and East Rand gold mines had been extended to April 14 to allow Pamodozi Gold management time to come up with the funds – or to provide concrete evidence that funds were available.

The April 14 ‘show-us-the-cash’ deadline for the President Steyn gold mine in the Free State and the Grootvlei gold mine on the East Rand coincides with the April 14 High Court return for the liquidation of Pamodzi Gold’s Orkney gold mine in North West province.

Motala told Mining Weekly Online, however, that final agreements were being negotiated with JIC Mining Services to resume operations at Orkney from April 15, a day after the court hearing.

“We’re signing agreements over this weekend to start production next week,” he said.

Every effort was being made to preserve the 3 300 jobs at Orkney.

The South African Press Agency reported that Pamodzi had been given an extension for Best Rock Investments to grant the company its long-awaited R200-million loan.

CNBC Africa reported that the JSE-listed Simmer & Jack gold and uranium mining company, which last month took over the Tau Lekoa gold mine from AngloGold Ashanti, might be interested in buying Pamodzi Gold's mining operations. Motala confirmed that well-established listed mining companies had been in contact with the provisional liquidators and judicial managers.

JIC Mining Services CEO Jagdish Parekh told Mining Weekly Online that it was envisaged that Orkney’s care-and-maintenance programme would end and that production would be reinstated on April 15.

If this went ahead, Parekh said that JIC would seek to bring Orkney back into full production within the shortest possible time in order to continue to safeguard the asset and to look after the interests of the staff and the creditors and to see how the operation could trade out of its predicament.

“But this is part of a legal process and we have to observe the court dates,” Parekh emphasised.

Judicial management of Pamodzi Gold's financially stricken Free State and East Rand operations were part of a separate process, which the Master of the High Court granted on Friday April 3.

There is, however, an overlap of provisional liquidation and provisional judicial management appointees, with the trio of Motala, Allan Pellow of Westrust and Deon Botha of Corporate Liquidators, common to both.

The provisional judicial managers had been functioning at Pamodzi Gold’s President Steyn and Grootvlei mines since Monday, April 6, Pellow said.

Other members of the provisional judicial management teams are JF Engelbrecht and Barend Petersen, in the Free State, and Gavin Gainsford of KPMG and Petersen again on the East Rand.

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