Ridge Mining and Impala platinum are in advanced talks over a shared smelting facility in South Africa.

Initial studies showed that there was not sufficient capacity to process the 600,000 t/y of concentrate produced at the Sheba Ridge, meaning Ridge Mining would need assistance.

A bankable feasibility study between Impala Platinum, African Rainbow Minerals and Ridge Mining will decide whether the smelter is necessary.

It has already been confirmed that Sheba Ridge has 10.7 million ounces of platinum group elements on site and Ridge Mining hopes to extract 18 million tonnes of ore per year for the mine life, Mining Weekly reports.

Terence Wilkinson, Chief Executive Officer, said: "The technical audit has taken more time than we envisaged due to the project's size and amount and detail required for the feasibility study and audit."

He said a feasibility study would decide on the smelter as well as "the power and project optimisation studies".



Source:

Ridge in ‘advanced' talks with Implats, ARM to build SA smelter, 19/06/08
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