JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Mineral explorer and developer White Rivers Exploration (WRE) and gold miner Harmony Gold have entered into a joint venture (JV) to explore and develop potential gold resources at WRE’s Beisa project and abutting exploration areas within Harmony’s adjacent operations in the Free State.
Under the terms of the agreement, WRE and Harmony would have an initial and fixed 65% and 35% interest respectively in the JV.
WRE would fund and manage the exploration activities to prefeasibility study level, after which both parties would contribute to the completion of any bankable feasibility study (BFS) in line with their percentage interests.
Once a positive BFS was completed, the exploration JV would be transferred into a mining JV in which Harmony and WRE would hold 51% and 49% respectively.
“The partnership with Harmony, one of the world’s biggest gold miners, is a significant step forward on our path to production on our large South African prospective gold projects,” WRE executive chairperson Neil Warburton said.
He added that, if the future exploration programme proved up significant gold resources, as was expected, access to Harmony’s neighbouring infrastructure would enable the mining and production of the exploration JV resources to be fast-tracked, which meant that limited capital funding would be required by the exploration JV partners.
“This exploration JV has the potential to position WRE as a substantial mining operation. We will be looking at a number of funding options as the venture progresses, including potential listings on the Johannesburg and London stock exchanges,” Warburton said.