Former CEO Johan du Toit
Photo by: Duane Daws
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – London- and Johannesburg-listed gold mining company Central Rand Gold (CRG) has engaged legal advisers to defend a wind-up application.
The company said in a Stock Exchange News Service announcement on Tuesday that the application by empowerment partner Puno Gold Investments was to wind up CRG South Africa, the group’s principal operating subsidiary and the holder of all of the mining and prospecting rights.
CRG described the application as being without merit.
Differences with Puno first surfaced in 2007 over the allocation of intercompany loans that fund the budget and work programme carried out by CRG South Africa.
Puno was later unsuccessful with a 2010 attempt to seek a High Court interdict to halt the proceeding of mining operations.
Former CRG CEO Johan du Toit, who left the company at the end of last year, is still to be replaced by the company, which describes itself on its website as one that is focused on gold prospecting and mining in the Central Rand goldfield, in and around Johannesburg.
According to its website, it has seven new order prospecting rights which include historic Golden City-linked names like Langlaagte, Crown Mines, Village Main, Robinson Deep, City Deep and Simmer & Jack and which extend 40 km from east to west and 7 km from north to south across an area that is said to contain 36.7-million ounces of gold in the inferred and indicated category.
The website states that some prospecting rights are still being transferred through Section 11 applications lodged with the Department of Mineral Resources and adds that the Southern Deeps new order prospecting right application, if granted, would extend the Central Rand project by a further 13 km to the south.