Centaur Holdings Ltd (“Centaur”), a global investment holding company with interests and investments ranging from asset management, wealth management, private equity, venture capital, mining and natural resources and agricultural investments is pleased to announce that it has completed a funding package through a wholly owned subsidiary (the “Company”) for IPC Coal (Pty) Ltd and IPC Mining (Pty) Ltd (collectively “IPC”).
Under the terms of a recently executed Cooperation Agreement, the Company has agreed to provide secured capital to expand IPC’s existing opencast mining operations at its Nungu Colliery, which will allow IPC to begin mining the underground reserves in February 2015.
The remaining extent of Portions 4 and 23 and Portions 67, 68 and 69 of the farm Elandspruit 291 JS form the Nungu Colliery which measures roughly 3258 hectares. The Nungu Colliery lies 5km West of Middelburg Town, Mpumalanga Province, Republic of South Africa and benefits from well established logistics infrastructure.
The Nungu Colliery coal reserves are located beneath the surface on the remaining extent of Portion 23 and access to the underground coal reserves is also located on Portion 23 in the high wall of the previously mined out Nungu West Opencast pit. All the opencast reserves on Portions 67, 68 and 69 have previously been mined and the pits have been rehabilitated and the surface levelled. Only the remaining underground coal reserves are available to be mined.
The Company previously funded IPC to mine the Nungu opencast reserves and based on IPC’s track record, has now agreed to fund an undisclosed sum to allow IPC to successfully mine the underground reserves of circa 7m tons of thermal coal.
Centaur and IPC have agreed an option to allow Centaur to increase the funding package and simultaneously acquire an equity stake in IPC as a secondary stage to the transaction.
Commenting on the funding package, Centaur Group CEO, Daniel McGowan, said
“The recently completed funding package for IPC is part of Centaur’s strategic plan for its mining division, with a specific focus on high quality export thermal coal and established logistics infrastructure. Centaur and IPC have a strong working relationship, which has been built on IPC successfully mining the Nungu opencast reserves. The funding package further demonstrates Centaur’s selective expansion plans in the natural resources sector in South Africa. Centaur will begin work on the secondary stage of the transaction during Q1 ”.
Webber Wentzel acted as Legal Counsel for Centaur for the security provisions of the Cooperation Agreement and Centaur Asset Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Centaur, acted as financial advisor for the transaction. Ecca Project Services (Pty) Ltd acted as mining advisor to Centaur and will maintain a supervisory role throughout the underground mining ‘life of mine’. The ‘Private Equity’ division of the Centaur Group was responsible for sourcing and managing the IPC transaction.
For more information www.centaurmining.com