TNMC could avoid final liquidation
Chakalisa Dube | Friday February 2, 2018 17:45
TNMC, which is a subsidiary of the BCL Group, will most likely go into final liquidation on April 9 if it does not find a suitable buyer.
Placing the Mine into final liquidation will inevitably make its sale a little bit complex. “The information I have discovered is more comprehensive than what I had before. It gives much detail regarding the available resources at the Mine and its overall viability. The information has a lot of positives about the viability of the Mine,” Dixon-Warren said yesterday.
He added: “A company that was tasked with doing a feasibility study (the study was aborted after the closure of TNMC) for the Mine has the information. They want a smaller fee to give me the information.
We are still negotiating the fee, but I shall be having the information very soon”.
Dixon-Warren stated that the information he has been using to market the Mine was not that detailed as it was intertwined with a report of the BCL Mine in Selebi-Phikwe.
Last October, the liquidator entered into exclusive talks with a potential buyer. Then, he had said the Mine might resume operations in April this year.
However, the exclusivity agreement signed with the potential buyer of the mine expired last December without much progress. This ruled out the possibility of the mine opening in April. The exclusive arrangement gave the prospective buyer some protection from another party from outbidding them.
“As soon as I receive the additional information I will start talks with the three companies that approached us last year with a view of purchasing the Mine. We could not engage them last year because of the exclusivity agreement. The company that we had an exclusivity agreement will also be in the mix. We will go for a reasonable offer,” he said.
Dixon-Warren expressed strong optimism that the sale of TNMC will be April 9, 2018. “If the sale is not concluded, I am hopeful that we would have made much progress (surrounding the sale of the Mine) that could enable us to convince the court not to place the Mine into final liquidation.”
Despite the fact that the liquidator and other mining stakeholders have always maintained that TNMC is a very viable business entity than BCL Mine, the mine has struggled to find suitors.
Over 700 TNMC employees directly lost their jobs while at BCL. Companies servicing the two mines also shed jobs.