Ernst Venter
Photo by: Duane Daws
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified mining company Exxaro sprung a surprise on Monday when it revealed that its projects and ferrous head Ernst Venter would be leaving its employ at the end of February.
The JSE-listed company said that Venter had opted to pursue other career opportunities outside of the Exxaro group.
In a statement under the heading of the ferrous commodity review of its impaired Mayoko iron-ore project investment process in the Republic of Congo (RoC), Exxaro said a KPMG study had found that a deviation from standard internal project development governance processes, in pursuit of first mover advantages, had resulted in inadequate identification of project specifications.
An aggressive ramp-up schedule had been assumed at acquisition of the project, which was continually moved out largely as a result of the delay in concluding the mining convention and rail and port access agreements.
That had resulted in the gradual erosion of projected returns over time.
An independent technical review of the project currently under way was expected in early 2015.
During the past six months, the 2.2-million-ton first phase of the Mayoko project had been stopped and the intention was to finalise the agreements with the RoC government early in 2015.
As communicated in the Stock Exchange News Service announcement in June, any further development expenditure on this project would be determined through a staged approach after considering the outcome of a prefeasibility study, a bankable feasibility study and commodity market conditions.
Guidance on 2015 project expenditure would be provided once the agreements had been signed.