GENERAL
A: The head office is based in Vancouver and South Africa at the below addresses:
Vancouver:
1080 – 1188 West Georgia Street,
Vancouver, BC
Canada,
V6E 4A2
South Africa:
Crocodile River Mine
Zandfontein, Brits
North West
South Africa
A: Potential suppliers or service providers who are interested in doing business with the mine can apply for open tenders which are published on our supplier page
A: Eastplats offers a wide range of career opportunities across its operations, any current vacancies will be published on the careers page
FINANCIAL
A: As previously communicated we are currently negotiating the value of the payable with Union Goal and looking to potentially resell the contract payable and outstanding receivables. We are confident that this issue will be resolved and will provide us with more financial flexibility going forward.
A: There are no plans to buy back shares or issue dividends at the moment. We are 100% committed to completing the soft re-start of the Zandfontein underground and all cash will go towards these efforts.
A: We have sufficient capital to initiate our soft restart plan to re-open the Zandfontein underground section. We will self-fund based on the profitability of chrome and PGM operations and ramp up production ounces based on positive cash flow.
OPERATIONS
behind you?
A: 2023 and 2024 are important years for Eastplats. We have made significant progress over the last few quarters and are focused on achieving our goals for 2024 and beyond. And we are confident we can achieve our goal of resuming operations at CRM, because:
– Our improved financial model and giving us a clearer line of sight to our outlook;
– Excellent relationships with our local communities and labour unions to achieve our ESG plans;
– Positive communication with Union Goal to resolve the outstanding contract payable
and outstanding receivables, which will help us to achieve a stronger balance sheet and provide flexibility to invest in our near-term growth plans, including Zandfontein underground;
– Of our supportive strategic investor in Ka An Development and financing providers such as Investec;
– Of our continued focus on reducing costs and improving efficiencies; and
– Of our increased confidence in our operations and management team.
We are confident that these actions, combined with our strong portfolio of high-quality PGM assets will position us to rebuild value for our shareholders.
A: There are 2 challenges: Firstly, to continue to focus our efforts on decreasing operating costs, especially electricity and logistics costs. We are looking at solar projects to mitigate the risk of loadshedding/load curtailment by Eskom. We deal with numerous logistic vendors to seek the lowest cost method of transportation (e.g., trains).
The second is to find high-performing talented people in the mining sector of South Africa to help us operate the CRM and develop our eastern limb projects. With other peers retrenching personnel, we have the opportunity to attract these people to our company.
A: We are planning to restart the Zandfontein underground in Q1 2024 and expect to get to a run rate of 40,000 tons/month by the end of 2024. This run rate is expected to double by the end of 2025, to approximately 80,000 tons/month.
OUTLOOK
A: We anticipate growth coming from our current portfolio in the Bushveld Complex in the near and mid-term.
In the near term, growth will come from the Crocodile River Mine as we bring the Zandfontein underground into operation.
In the mid to longer term, we have three other PGM assets (apart from CRM) in the portfolio that we can advance to grow the company. At the Mareesburg project, as mentioned earlier, we plan to conduct environmental work to complete its Environmental Impact Assessment in 2024. On the western limb of BCX, Spitzkop is in the process of an environmental assessment. The aim here would be to put this asset into production 12 -24 months following the environmental assessment, subject to financing and market conditions.
Focusing on developing the PGM-rich assets within our portfolio presents lots of optionality and opportunities for growth for Eastplats.