Sylvania Platinum has entered into an agreement with Aquarius Platinum to assess the potential of the Everest North UG2 platinum deposit in South Africa.

The two companies said a feasibility committee had been formed to examine and update an existing feasibility study for the processing of platinum group metal (pgm) ore produced at the site.

Low cost pgm miner Sylvania and Aquarius, the world's fourth -largest platinum producer, will apply for a mining licence and a Joint Venture (JV) will subsequently be formed.

Aquarius is to be appointed as contract miner to carry out all mining at Everest North.

A minimum of 27,000 t/m of processing capacity will be made available by Aquarius at the Everest South Metallurgical Plant.

Terry McConnachie, Sylvania chief executive officer, said the agreement will allow the company to successfully exploit "significant value" from the Vygenhoek prospecting area.

"While we are effectively giving away half of our ore resource the advantage to Sylvania is a vastly reduced capex bill and thus increased IRR and NPV," he added.

"The area has further resource potential for platinum group metals and we are delighted that by signing this JV we are now in a position to re-examine the feasibility study with our new partners, Aquarius Platinum."

Source:

Sylvania agree platinum joint venture in South Africa (03/06/11) 

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